The World's Dumbest Tariff Has Been Revealed

With the Iran war threatening supplies of critical, energy-intensive materials, one might assume the US government was prepared for this risk and has been working hard to soften the blow. In the case of aluminum, that assumption would be incorrect. Instead, Washington is making things worse.

The United States has spent much of the past decade constructing a protectionist wall around the domestic aluminum industry. First, in 2018, President Donald Trump invoked Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 to impose 10% “national security” tariffs on aluminum products from most countries. Then last year, he raised the tariffs to 50% and eliminated exemptions for allies, while also expanding the levies to cover hundreds of "derivative" products – ranging from canned goods to industrial wires – that contain the metal.