Source: Blog – Alliance for American Manufacturing
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Lots of talk, and only a few moves. But they’re big ones.
Time for a tariff roundup! Since returning to office, the Trump administration has announced a slew of reports and recommendations related to trade policy. But, while setting an April deadline for most of those reports, President Trump has already made and altered several tariff announcements.
In the few weeks since we last looked at what tariffs have actually taken effect, there have been massive changes. So let’s look again. What tariffs are on right now?
Canada, Mexico and China
On February 1, President Trump said he would impose tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China in response to fentanyl smuggling and immigration flows. Trump announced these tariffs under an authority called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and they included a 25% tariff on all imported products from Mexico and Canada (and a reduced 10% tariff on Canadian energy resources) and a 10% tariff on all imported products from China.
On February 27, Trump announced he would increase the China tariff by another 10%, effective on March 4, and China responded with a 15% tariff on a number of U.S. agricultural products. New tariffs that the Trump administration has imposed on Chinese imports now stand at 20%.
The Canada and Mexico tariffs, meanwhile, have gone through a series of fits and starts. On March 4, the 25% tariffs announced in February went into effect, which drew retaliatory tariffs from Canada of 25% on $155 billion of American exports and a warning of retaliation from the Mexican government. On March 5, President Trump paused for a month the tariff on autos and auto parts coming from Mexico and Canada, then suspended the tariff for all products traded under the rules of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement; that’s the 2019 NAFTA update the first Trump administration negotiated and signed. Canada, which was planning to implement its retaliatory tariffs in stages, paused its second wave before it went into effect, but the first wave on $30 billion worth of U.S. exports remains in place.
The amount of trade covered by the tariffs is still a substantial; Bloomberg reports 38% of imported Canadian goods and 49% of Mexican goods were USMCA compliant in 2024. The tariffs for Canadian and Mexican imports that are not compliant with the USMCA are now at 25%.
Steel and Aluminum
Meanwhile, the steel and aluminum tariffs are up and running. These are not new tariffs; they were initially imposed in 2018 under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and largely maintained by the Biden administration. In a pair of presidential proclamations of February 10 and 11, Trump reinstated and expanded these tariffs by closing existing loopholes and exemptions and increasing the tariff on aluminum from 10% to 25%.
Specifically, the reinstated steel and aluminum tariffs:
A. Terminate all alternate arrangements made with countries such as Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
B. Eliminate the tariff exclusion request process for specific products.
C. Expand the tariffs to cover certain downstream products not previously subject to the tariffs.
As of March 12, these tariffs are on. The Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) supported the tariffs when they were first imposed in 2018 and supported their reinstatement now.
“We support strengthening the steel and aluminum tariffs to ensure their efficacy in boosting capacity utilization and incentivizing companies to increase their output, make new investments, and hire workers,” AAM President Scott Paul said in a statement. “Including steel derivatives makes a lot of sense. This addition will ensure that importers can’t game the system and American companies that make these products have a level playing field.”
And what about reciprocal tariffs?
President Trump in February signed an executive memorandum on “Reciprocal Trade and Tariffs” directing his economic team to create a “Fair and Reciprocal Plan” for imposing a supplemental tariff on virtually all countries. The plan here is to counteract a wide range of tariff, tax, and non-tariff barriers that negatively affect U.S. producers selling into foreign markets, including tariffs; unfair, discriminatory, or extraterritorial taxes (including value-added taxes); non-tariff barriers; and exchange rates. It’s unclear whether or when actual tariffs under this authority will be imposed, but those are supposed to ripen on April 2. AAM this week offered its comments to the United States Trade Representative on this proposal, writing:
Tariffs are just one aspect of a policy framework to revitalize U.S. production in critical industrial sectors. AAM urges the administration to proceed with a comprehensive strategy that includes enforcement, addressing loopholes, eradicating forced labor, and continuing to make strategic investments in critical sectors. Further, it is necessary to provide funding for federal agencies on the front lines of these efforts, and assistance must be available to workers who are adversely impacted by unfair trade.
You can read all the comments here.
While President Trump has also articulated concerns about pharmaceuticals, automobiles, semiconductors, agricultural products, copper, lumber, shipbuilding, and more, no tariffs specific to these investigations have yet been implemented. But we (of course) will be watching.
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