Retroactivity for Section 232 Product Exclusion Depends on Posting Date
The Commerce Department has not been able to keep up with the flood of product exclusion submissions -- the steel exclusion requests numbered 3,979 as of April 19, but just 120 have been posted for comments. For aluminum, there have been 396 exclusion requests, and 26 posted. No new filing has been posted since April 13 for aluminum, but the agency posted 44 steel product exclusion requests just on April 20th.
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A Commerce Department official reiterated that the tariff refunds are still pegged to the posting date, not to the submission date. That policy was spelled out by the White House in March 22 proclamations about the tariffs on steel and aluminum. “For merchandise entered on or after the date the directly affected party submitted a request for exclusion, such relief shall be retroactive to the date the request for exclusion was posted for public comment," said President Donald Trump in the proclamations.
Senate Finance Committee leaders raised concerns for the process in an April 19 letter (see 1804190048). "The significant delays in publicly posting product exclusion requests risk serious and permanent financial harm to many petitioners that, even in [Commerce's] judgement, should not be subject to the Section 232 tariffs," said the senators.