Comments on Section 232 Exclusion Process Solicited

The Bureau of Industry and Security is asking for comments on the Section 232 exclusion process, including the request, objection, rebuttal and surrebuttal process, the standards of review, transparency of the process, and General Approved Exclusions. Officials are particularly interested in hearing ideas about how to reduce the volume of submission errors and rejected filings in the exclusions portal; whether reducing the length or type of attachments could speed the processing of requests; whether there should be a public summary of confidential business information underpinning exclusion requests or objections; whether there should be public disclosure of delivery times in requests or objections; whether evidence supporting requests or objections should have to be from the last 90 days; and how to streamline the online forms. Comments should be filed at regulations.gov, docket number BIS-2021-0042, by March 28.

So far, BIS has made determinations on more than 369,000 exclusion requests, and has received more than 382,000 exclusion requests; about 70% do not receive objections, but on those that do, the average time to decision is 98 days. About 8% of imported steel and 7% of imported aluminum is covered by exclusions to the tariffs.