Tariffs, Trade and Reshoring

On 23 March 2018 imports of steel into the United States began to pay a duty of 25%, and imports of aluminium 10%, under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, a national-security statute that lets the President act after a Commerce Department investigation. The investigation had been opened in 2017. American mills gained at once: protected prices funded the profits and the new electric-arc mills described in Chapter 10. Every manufacturer that bought steel paid more for it. And the countries whose steel was taxed answered with duties of their own on American goods, chosen, by the usual account, for political effect. The European Union's rebalancing duties took effect in June 2018, raising its tariff on US-made motorcycles from 6% to 31%, about $2,200 more on an average motorcycle shipped from the United States to Europe and about $90–100 million a year if Harley-Davidson absorbed it. In late June 2018 Harley said in a regulatory filing that it would move production for EU customers from its US plants to its international plants over the following nine to eighteen months (company, reported). A tariff meant to protect American factories had pushed American production abroad within three months.

Six weeks before the metals duties, on 7 February 2018, a different tariff had taken effect for a different reason. Whirlpool had petitioned for a safeguard under Section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974 against imported large residential washers, and the President's Proclamation 9694, signed on 23 January, imposed a tariff-rate quota for three years and a day, with a lower rate on imports up to a quota and a higher one above it, later extended to 7 February 2023. Unlike anti-dumping orders, which apply country by country and which production can escape by moving to another country, a safeguard applies to imports from every source. The only way round it was to make washers in the United States. Samsung opened a washer plant in Newberry, South Carolina and LG one in Clarksville, Tennessee. Washer prices rose about 12%, and dryer prices by a similar amount although dryers were not covered, because households buy them in pairs (Federal Reserve and University of Chicago economists, reported). Whirlpool's own results did not show a clear lasting gain: the steel inside its washers was now taxed under Section 232, and the safeguard had brought two of its rivals inside the wall (company, reported).

Eight years later both tariffs had grown and multiplied. Section 232 duties on steel and aluminium rose to 50% on 4 June 2025, and from 6 April 2026 the metals regime applied duty to the full customs value of metal-containing goods; imported washing machines now pay 25% on their full value under the regime's Annex I-B, which works like a permanent safeguard without a quota for as long as it lasts. The emergency tariffs of 2025 were struck down by the Supreme Court, replaced by a temporary tariff, and replaced again by a new Section 301 regime. Whirlpool, meanwhile, pledged $300 million for its Clyde and Marion laundry plants in Ohio in October 2025 and reported net sales down 8.8% in the third quarter of 2026 (company).