Follow live updates about Trump's rates and executive orders.
The 25 percent rates that President Trump imposed on all American imports of steel and aluminum on Monday will mainly touch American allies, but in their hearts they hit his old Nemesis: China.
The top five suppliers from Staal to the American market in January were Canada, followed by Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Germany. Canada has also led to aluminum exports to the United States, while the United Arab Emirates, Russia and China stay far behind.
China does not export much steel or aluminum directly to the United States. A sequence of statements by presidents and trade department has already imposed many rates on Staal from China. Rates have also risen on the Chinese aluminum lately. Last September President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Existing rates on many Chinese steel and aluminum products increased by a maximum of 25 percent.
But China dominates the global steel and aluminum industry. The huge, modern mills make as much metals every year, or more, as the rest of the world together. Most is used within the Chinese boundaries, to build everything, from high -rise buildings and ships to washing machines and cars.
Yet the Chinese steel and aluminum export is increasing because the economy is struggling, which means that domestic demand stops. Many of these cheap exports went to American allies such as Canada and Mexico, which in turn export important shares of their own more expensive output to the United States. Other Chinese metal exports went to developing countries such as Vietnam, which now buys huge amounts of semi-processing steel from China, finishes it and then re-exported as Vietnamese steel for buyers around the world.
The rising export of China has upset producers and trade unions in the United States.
“The overcapacity of China is the flooding of the world markets and the seriously injured of American producers and employees,” said Michael Wessel, the old commercial adviser of the United SteelWorkers of America.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had little to say specifically about the planned samples and aluminium rates during the daily briefing on Monday. “Let me emphasize that protectionism does not lead anywhere. Trade and tariff wars have no winners, “said Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for the ministry.
The planned rates come a week after President Trump imposed a rate of 10 percent for all imports from China. Last week, China announced that it would impose retaliation rates, which came into effect on Monday in liquid natural gas, coal, farm machines and other products from the United States.
The steel glut from China originated from an extraordinary tree in the construction of the steel factory that started in the early 1990s and lasted about 15 years, said Nick Tolerico, a senior steel trade officer in the Reagan administration who subsequently became president of the American Operations for Thyssenkrupp Steel from Germany. He is now a consultant who advises investment companies and companies that buy a lot of steel.
Since the 1940s, no country has given the order that the steel industry of the world is today on the China scale. The United States then made half of the steel in the world, but the share has since fallen to less than 5 percent.
For years, the Chinese construction sector used enormous amounts of steel. A tree from the building produced abundant homes for the 1.4 billion people in the country and plenty of empty apartments for another 300 million people.
The overhang of empty apartments has now propelled a housing market crash and an abrupt stall in construction. Desperate to prevent the Chinese mills from being closed, the Chinese mills have responded with an increase in steel output to countries around the world. In recent years they have accepted lower and lower prices for their steel, which causes worldwide prices erosion.
The falling prices have damaged the American steel industry, a politically powerful constituency in important election regions. The United SteelWorkers of America has its headquarters in Pittsburgh, the core of the long -term basis of the industry in Pennsylvania, which is central to the recent presidential elections. US Steel, an emblem of America's previously too large role in steel production, is also located in Pennsylvania.
The steel trade against China is not limited to the United States. Brazil, Canada, Indonesia and Turkey have all greatly increased the rates on steel from China in the past year.
During his first term, President Trump imposed additional rates of 25 percent in steel and 10 percent rates for aluminum import from all over the world. He then released large steel-producing countries such as South Korea, Australia and Brazil from the rates in exchange for their impressive quotas for how many tons of steel they would send to the United States every year. But he left the rates for China.
Trade protection helped the American steel industry, which has increased its capacity by about one fifth over the past six years, building modern steel factories. Older, less efficient mills have started with less than full production.
By the last week of January, steel factories in the United States worked at 74.4 percent of capacity, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute, a industrial group established in Washington.
Siyi Zhao contributed research.
