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01-06-2025
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has announced the US will double its current tariff rate on steel and aluminium imports from 25% to 50%, starting on Wednesday.
Speaking at a rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Trump said the move would help boost the local steel industry and national supply, while decreasing reliance on China.
Trump also said that $14bn would be invested into the area’s steel production through a partnership between US Steel and Japan’s Nippon Steel. Details on the partnership are still unclear and both companies have yet to confirm a deal.
The announcement is the latest turn in Trump’s rollercoaster approach to tariffs since re-entering office in January.
“There will be no layoffs and no outsourcing whatsoever and every US steel worker will soon receive a well-deserved $5,000 bonus,” Trump told the crowd, filled with steelworkers, to raucous applause.
One of the major concerns from steelworkers about the US-Japan trade deal was how Japan would honor workers’ union contract which regulates pay and hiring.
Trump began his remarks by reflecting on how he “saved” US Steel, America’s biggest steel manufacturer, located in Pittsburgh, with the 25% steel tariffs he implemented during his first term as president, in 2018.
He touted the increase to 50% as a way to ensure US Steel’s survival.
“At 50%, they can no longer get over the fence,” he said. “We are once again going to put Pennsylvania steel into the backbone of America, like never before.”
The announcement comes amid a court battle over the legality of some of Trump’s global tariffs, which an appeals court has allowed to continue after a lower court had ordered the administration to halt the taxes.
His tariffs on steel and aluminium were untouched by the lawsuit.
“It is a good day for steelworkers,” JoJo Burgess, a member of the local United Steelworkers union who was at Trump’s rally, told media.
Burgess, who is also the city mayor of nearby Washington, Pennsylvania, expressed optimism over the reported details of the partnership with Nippon Steel, saying he hoped it would help breed a new generation of steel workers in the area.
He recalled “making a lot of money” in the years after Trump instituted steel tariffs in his first term.
Although Burgess would not label himself a Trump supporter, and has only voted for Democratic nominees for president in the last two decades, he said; “I’m never going to disagree with something that’s going to level the playing field for American manufacturing” but so far, the impacts of Trump’s tariffs have largely led to global economic chaos. Global trade and markets have upended and cracks have formed or widened among relations between the US and other countries including some of its closest partners.
The levies have worsened relations between China and the US, the world’s two biggest global economies and launched the countries into a tit-for-tat trade battle.
On Friday, President Trump accused China of violating a truce they’d reached over tariffs earlier this month over talks in Geneva.
China “totally violated its agreement with us,” Trump said, though he did not give details. However, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer later clarified that China had not been removing non-tariff barriers as agreed under the deal.
China then shot back with its own accusations of US wrongdoing. Beijing’s response on Friday did not address the US claims directly but urged the US to “cease discriminatory restrictions against China”. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
