From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Steel and Aluminum Tariffs - Director Summary

Description: GAO's Kim Gianopoulos discusses a new report that evaluates
how the Department of Commerce administers requests from US importers
seeking relief from tariffs the President imposed in 2018 on steel and
aluminum products.

Related GAO Works: GAO-20-517: Steel and Aluminum Tariffs: Commerce
Should Improve Its Exclusion Request Process and Economic Impact Reviews 

Released: September 2020


[Kim Gianopoulos] Hello, I'm Kim Gianopoulos, a director of
International Affairs and Trade at GAO.

In 2018, the President imposed tariffs on many steel and aluminum
imports, and told the Department of Commerce to allow U.S. companies to
request relief from paying these tariffs in certain circumstances.
Congress asked GAO to examine this process and today we released our
report. 

Commerce rejected thousands of these tariff exclusion requests because
companies made errors in their applications. This delayed relief for
requesters and increased work for Commerce.

Additionally, about three quarters of the requests Commerce accepted and
reviewed were not decided in a timely way. Although Commerce took steps
to improve timeliness, such as creating a new submission website, they
continue to fall behind on deadlines and have a significant backlog of
unprocessed requests. 

We also found weaknesses in how Commerce evaluated the economic impact
of these tariffs, which may leave the Department unable to consistently
assess if tariff adjustments are needed.

We made three recommendations to  Commerce: to address factors in the
process that may cause submission errors; make program changes to
improve timeliness and cut backlogs; and assign responsibility for
regularly reviewing the tariffs' impacts and document the results.

For more information, check out GAO-20-517 at www.gao.gov.