Commerce Releases Section 232 Investigation Reports

The Commerce Department posted its Section 232 investigation reports on whether national security is threatened by imports of vanadium, transformers and transformer inputs made from grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES), titanium sponge and uranium. All the investigations were initiated under the Trump administration, but the most recently completed investigation on vanadium was finished after President Joe Biden took office (see 2103020027).

On vanadium, Commerce said that "the present quantities and circumstances of vanadium imports do not threaten to impair the national security as defined in Section 232." Commerce suggested that the government should still make an effort to support domestic vanadium production through expanded stockpiling and recycling promotion. Biden hasn't publicly taken any official action as a result of the vanadium investigation.

Commerce concluded in October last year that transformers and transformer inputs "are being imported into the United States in such quantities and under such circumstances as to threaten to impair U.S. national security," the report said. Recommended actions included tariffs on the products and changes to tariff codes "for laminations and cores to the steel HTS category rather than the transformer category." Among the tariff options are "a 25 percent global tariff rate [that] will be applied to imports of laminations and cores (both stacked and wound) for incorporation into electric transformers" that would "result in positive tariff revenues and has the potential to reduce the import of laminations and cores (stacked and wound)," it said. "The alternative is to issue a new global tariff rate on laminations and cores (stacked and wound) and set it to 100 percent. This rate was requested by the domestic GOES producer as they believe it will incentivize both domestic GOES consumption and lamination and core (stacked and wound) production."

Commerce said in the November 2019 report on titanium sponge imports that such goods also threaten national security, and it determined that "an adjustment of tariffs on imported titanium sponge will not address the distortionary effect of non-market producers such as Russia, and eventually China, on the global titanium sponge market." Uranium imports were also found to be a national security threat, though the Commerce recommendations didn't include quotas or tariffs.

Lawmakers recently began pushing the Biden administration for these reports and one on auto and auto parts (see 2106140039). Commerce posted the auto report earlier this month (see 2107070007).