According to a White House Council of Economic Advisers’ report, thanks to the Section 232 tariffs, imports have decreased while domestic production has increased for steel and aluminum.
According to the report, production in the US domestic steel industry increased by six percent in the March-December period 2018, with employment at iron and steel mills and in ferroalloy production increasing by 6,200 jobs over the same period. In the April-November period of 2018, steel imports were 11 percent lower compared to the same period of the previous year. In the March-December of last year, the producer price index for iron and steel in the US rose by 7.5 percent year on year.
The report also stated that the retaliatory actions against the Section 232 tariffs taken by Canada, China, the EU, Mexico, Russia and Turkey were challenged at the World Trade Organization by the US, which argued that these actions went beyond steel and aluminum to cover a wide array of products.
The Section 232 tariffs went into effect in March 2018.