ITC Removes Duties on Tin Mill Steel
In a unanimous vote on February 6, the International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled there will no longer be duties on tin mill steel from Canada, China, and Germany. It also voted to terminate the antidumping duty investigation against South Korea as there were too few subject imports originating there. The other four countries in the original case (Taiwan, Turkey, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom) were already removed due to the 0% margins set by the Department of Commerce in January. This ruling is wholly separate from the 25% Section 232 tariff on tin plate steel imposed by Trump Administration.
We will know more about the ITC’s reasoning when it releases a report later this month. For now, this is a huge win for food canners across the country. Below is a breakdown of the Cleveland Cliffs petition that Constitution Partners has been following for the past year.
Background
In January 2023, Cleveland Cliffs, Inc. and the United Steelworkers Union proposed antidumping tariffs of up to 300% on countries importing tin mill products to the United States. These include Canada, China, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. The petition also sought imposing countervailing duties on U.S. imports on tin mill products from China.
According to market research by the Consumer Brands Association, the proposed tariffs would have resulted in a price hike of up to 58 cents for canned products — including food, pet food, paint and other home care items — across the United States, and would have negatively impact manufacturing workers to the tune of 40,000 lost jobs.
Since the Trump Administration initiated the Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum in 2018, American farmers and processors have been asking the Administration to exclude the specialty tinplate steel used for canned food products. Only ~2% of steel produced domestically is tinplate steel – it is a specialty material used to manufacture cans for fruits and vegetables. Not only is tinplate steel a unique product – with no national security application – the domestic tinplate steel producers will only produce enough to satisfy less than half of the demand. The gap must be filled by imported tinplate steel – which primarily comes from U.S. allies, such as South Korea, Belgium, the UK, and others (i.e. not China).
Companies with this sentiment, including Bush Beans and the Consumer Brands Association, had an opportunity to testify before the ITC early last month. They argued that since the imposition of these tariffs, the U.S. steel industry has not and will not re-invest in this specialty product because it is too low margin. In fact, the number of domestic production lines for tinplate steel has decreased since the imposition of Section 232 tariffs.
ITC's ruling is separate from the ongoing 25% tariff from the Section 232 investigation, but the additional tariff would have been absolutely devastating to industry and the consumer.
Statements from Stakeholders
The Consumer Brands Association President & CEO David Chavern issued the following statement after ITC’s ruling: “The Consumer Brands-led effort has resulted in a true victory for U.S. consumers and manufacturers with the International Trade Commission’s unanimous vote to reject new tariffs on tin mill steel. The 0 – 4 vote against the tariffs, combined with the Department of Commerce’s final duty determination in January, is a complete repudiation of a petition brought by steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs. If the tariffs had been imposed at the levels requested by Cleveland-Cliffs, nearly 40,000 manufacturing jobs would have been put at risk, with consumer prices for canned goods soaring up to 30 percent. Today’s result confirms what we’ve known all along – there was no merit to Cleveland-Cliffs’ claims."