United States President Donald Trump has slapped 25 percent tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports in his latest push to reshape an international trading order that he claims is unfairly stacked against US manufacturers and workers.
Speaking from the White House as he announced his latest trade salvo on Monday, Trump said that US industry has been “pummelled by both friend and foe alike”.
Trump said the tariffs, which he had floated on Sunday, would apply to all countries with “no exemptions, no exceptions”.
Trump’s latest tariffs, which are due to take effect on March 12, are all but certain to prompt retaliatory moves from affected countries, which include some of Washington’s closest allies, raising the likelihood of new trade skirmishes on multiple fronts.
The US imported about $49bn worth of steel and aluminium in 2024, according to government data.
Canada was the biggest supplier of steel, followed by Mexico, Brazil, South Korea, Germany and Japan, according to the US International Trade Administration.
Canada was also the largest exporter of aluminium, with other major suppliers including the United Arab Emirates, South Korea and China.
Trump’s announcement prompted an almost immediate backlash in Canada.
In Asia, markets mostly reacted negatively to the news, with benchmark indexes falling in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Manila, though the KOSPI in Seoul saw gains.
South Korea’s government-funded Korea Development Institute on Tuesday cut its growth forecast for 2025 to 1.6 percent, down 0.4 percentage points from its previous estimate, citing concerns about the effect of Trump’s tariffs.
Trump has signalled that he will this week also announce reciprocal tariffs on countries that impose levies on US goods, without specifying which countries will be affected.
Those would come on top of Trump’s announcements of a 10 percent tariff on all Chinese goods, which came into effect last week, and 25 percent tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports, which the US president has agreed to suspend until March 1 after reaching a temporary deal on the security of their countries’ shared borders.
Economists have warned that Trump’s broad-based tariffs will lead to higher prices for US consumers and risk setting off an escalating spiral of trade disputes that could dampen global growth.
Trump and his allies have argued that the levies will help revive domestic manufacturing and boost state coffers.
The Tax Foundation, a think tank based in Washington, DC, has estimated that Trump’s tariffs in 2018 and 2019 led to a 0.2 percent reduction in gross domestic product (GDP).
Michael Stanaitis, a trade expert at the American University in Washington, DC, said the impact of Trump’s tariffs would be “very serious”.
Trump previously announced a 25 tariff on steel and a 10 percent tariff on aluminium imports from most countries during his first administration in 2018.
After initially exempting a host of US allies and friendly countries, Trump later that year extended the tariffs to the European Union, Canada and Mexico.
In 2019, the US president reached agreements with Canada, Mexico, Australia and Argentina to exempt their exports from the tariffs.
Despite insisting there would be no exemptions from the tariffs on Monday, Trump said he would give “great consideration” to excluding Australia from the measures after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said earlier that the sides were in discussion about an exemption.
Stanaitis, the American University professor, said Trump’s latest tariffs would cause “a lot of angst and tension” among the US’s trade partners.
