As announced by the office of US Senator Pat Toomey, following a request from him and two other US Senators Doug Jones and Tom Carper, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) will review the steel and aluminum tariff exclusion process conducted by the US Commerce Department (Commerce) early next year. Senators Toomey, Jones, and Carper initially asked the GAO to review Commerce's tariff exclusion process in November 2018.
Toomey’s statement said that the Commerce Department exclusion process for the Trump administration's tariffs on steel and aluminum has generated a large backlog of petitions and has placed significant burdens on American businesses. By the end of October, Commerce had received 49,301 exclusion petitions (including resubmissions) and had issued decisions for just 16,567 (34 percent) of them.
The letter urged the GAO to examine several questions, such as how Commerce has incorporated feedback from petitioners, members of Congress, and other stakeholders to develop and improve the process and what criteria is used to approve or deny an exclusion request.
The GAO is set to begin its review of the exclusion process by March 2019.