On May 27, 2022, US President Joe Biden announced the suspension of a 25% tariff on steel and steel products imported to the United States from Ukraine for one year.
The decision comes after Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein and Republican Senator Patrick Toomey sent a letter to Biden in April urging him to lift the tariff to boost the Ukrainian economy.
According to the US Commerce Department, the Biden administration would suspend 232 tariffs on Ukrainian steel for a year, as stated in early May.
‘I have determined to suspend the tariffs set forth in Proclamation 9705 for the import of steel articles and derivative steel articles from Ukraine for 1 year,’ Biden said in a statement.
He added that the US secretary of commerce would monitor the situation in the domestic steel industry and developments in Ukraine’s steel industry and inform him of any need to terminate or extend this suspension.
Ukraine accounted for less than 1% of the US imports in 2021, and the president predicted that Ukraine’s steel production and the steel imports to the US from Ukraine would be even lower due to Russia’s special military operation.
The 25% tariff was imposed in 2018 by the Trump administration as part of a national security initiative to improve the US industrial manufacturing capacity.
