The process to exclude steel and aluminium from the Section 232 import tariffs applied by the United States is having some interesting consequences.
One of these is that, in the event of a national security issue -which Section 232 was designed to address - the US would theoretically rely on Japan for its imports of steel and Saudi Arabia for its imports of aluminium.That is because those countries have been granted the highest volumes of material in the exclusions process. This takes in more than 1 billion kg of Japan-origin steel, equivalent to around 62% of the country's imports into the US in 2017, and more than 1.6 billion kg of aluminium from Saudi Arabia, around 2,379% of its imports in 2017.This is the situation at the moment, with around half of the exclusions requests for material from Japan and Saudi Arabia having been dealt with by the US Department of Commerce.Japanese steel has so far received more than 9,000 exclusion requests, with 38% approved and 16% denied. The rest are pending.Requests for...