In an interview given to the Wall Street Journal, US President Donald Trump has stated the US Section 232 report on imported steel may have to take more time.
Trump said, “We don’t want to do it at this moment.”
“You can’t just walk in and say I’m going to do this," Trump commented, adding, "You have to do statutory studies (…) It doesn’t go that quickly.” At the same time, he did not give any information about when the report will be released.
As previously reported by SteelOrbis, in hearings held in Washington, D.C. in late May, US Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had repeated his desire to complete the ongoing Section 232 investigation into the effect of steel imports on US national security by the end of June.
According to Trump, however, the US DOC’s plan to prepare the report by the end of June had to be delayed because of the complexity of the issue. SteelOrbis reported in early July that, according to recent information, the US Section 232 report on imported steel had been delayed until after the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.