Volume I, No. X
Tubas, trailers and propane cylinders: the Section 232 metals tariff now grows by notice
Commerce proposes adding 14 product groups to the steel, aluminum and copper duties, mostly at 25 percent of full value. It is the first published use of the rolling inclusion power that replaced the request windows in April, and comments are due August 27.
Among the products that the Department of Commerce now proposes to treat as a threat to the defense industrial base are tubas, trumpets and every other brass-wind instrument, along with their parts and accessories1. They sit on a list of 14 product groups, published today by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), that also includes fire extinguishers, floor safes, tanker trailers, mobile cranes and steel cylinders of propane1. The list is less interesting for any single entry than for how it was made. Until April, new products reached the Section 232 metals tariffs through requests filed during set two-week submission windows4. This notice is the first published use of the power that replaced those windows, under which Commerce and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative may add derivatives on their own initiative, on a rolling basis, at a rate already fixed by proclamation1,2. Written comments are due August 271.
The instrument: a derivative power with no petition behind it
Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 lets the President, once Commerce finds that imports of an article threaten to impair national security, determine “the nature and duration of the action” needed to “adjust the imports of the article and its derivatives”6. The steel and aluminum findings date from Proclamations 9704 and 9705 of March 2018, and the copper finding from Proclamation 10962 of July 30, 20252. Everything in today’s notice hangs on the word “derivatives.”
Proclamation 11021, signed April 2, rebuilt the regime in three ways2. It made the duty apply to the full customs value of covered goods “regardless of metal content,” from April 62. It terminated the inclusion processes that Proclamations 10895, 10896 and 10962 had set up2. And in clause 11 it authorized the Secretary of Commerce and the Trade Representative to add a derivative whenever they “jointly determine” that its imports have increased in a way that threatens national security, contributes to the threats already found, or “otherwise undermine[s] the objectives” of the existing actions2. They may ask domestic producers and trade groups for information, but nothing requires a request from industry2.
The notice relies on the third and loosest of those grounds. Commerce says that “information available” to it shows the 14 groups “tend to be composed predominately of aluminum, steel, and/or copper by weight” and that their imports “threaten to undermine the objectives” of the 2018 and 2025 actions1. It cites no import figures.
BIS also states that the Administrative Procedure Act’s notice-and-comment requirements do not apply, because the action “involves a military function of the United States”1. Section 553 of the Act does exempt “a military or foreign affairs function”7. On that footing BIS says no Regulatory Flexibility Act analysis is required either, and says it is taking comments only because public input “may help to better inform” its decisions1. Barnes, Richardson & Colburn observed of the military-function claim that “This is apparently true even for brass-wind musical instruments and their parts”8. The firm’s reading is that “it appears certain that BIS will impose Section 232 duties on the products identified in the notice,” though “comments could prove beneficial if BIS’ position was challenged”8.
The mechanism: four rate tiers for fourteen product groups
Clause 11 sets the default. A new derivative pays the clause (3) rate, 25 percent, unless an identical or substantially comparable article already pays the 50 percent clause (2) rate2. The notice departs from the default only where an earlier proclamation has carved out a class:
- 25 percent. Non-lamellar aluminum powder (HTSUS 7603.10.0000); brass-wind instruments and their parts (9205.10.0000, 9209.99.4080); parts of welding machines (8515.90.2000); free-standing floor safes (8303.00.0000); conductor cables (8544.49.2000, 8544.49.3040, 8544.49.3080, 8544.60.4000); fire extinguishers (8424.10.0000); parts of heat exchange units (8419.90.3000); parts of linear hydraulic power engines (8412.90.9005); tanker trailers (8716.31.00); and other trailers (8716.40.00) [1].
- The mobile-equipment schedule. Mobile lifting frames on tires and straddle carriers (8426.12.0000) and other self-propelled cranes (8426.41.0090) would follow Proclamation 11032 [1]. Through December 31, 2027, that schedule charges 25 percent, but goods of the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and five other listed partners pay an additional rate that brings the combined duty to 15 percent, and USMCA-qualifying goods from Canada and Mexico pay 25 percent on non-U.S. content only, subject to a 15 percent floor [3].
- 15 percent. Self-loading or self-unloading agricultural trailers (8716.20.00) would join the temporarily reduced tier, which Proclamation 11032 widened in June to cover agricultural equipment [1, 3]. The tier sets a combined rate of 15 percent until December 31, 2027 and reverts to 25 percent from January 1, 2028 [2].
- 50 percent. Steel containers filled with liquefied propane (2711.12.0020), oxygen (2804.40.0000) or propylene (2901.22.0000) would pay the rate that applies to the same containers when imported empty [1]. Proclamation 11021 anticipated the case, providing that metal containers may be included “even if they are filled with items” outside the tariffs [2]. The duty would fall on the container’s value, not the gas [1].
The usual qualifications in Proclamation 11021 carry over. Derivatives whose metal content is entirely U.S.-smelted or U.S.-melted pay 10 percent, and since June “entirely” has meant at least 85 percent by weight, down from 952,3. A good listed under more than one metal pays once2. Manufacturing drawback is available on included articles only when they come from a listed trade-agreement partner, contain partner-origin metal and are not of a type covered by an antidumping or countervailing duty order2. No effective date is proposed. An inclusion applies from the date of the joint finding, or the first practicable date after it, as announced in the Federal Register2.
Five of the proposed lines are not new to the program. The propane, oxygen and propylene numbers, fire extinguishers (8424.10.0000) and one conductor-cable line (8544.49.2000) were among the 407 codes BIS added in August 2025, after the first submission window4. At that time the duty reached only “the steel and aluminum content” of each product4. The notice treats them as new additions, which suggests they fell outside the lists reset in April. A final inclusion would bring them back at full value.
The effect: users of equipment, not makers of metal
The products share one feature: most are finished goods or capital equipment, bought by farms, fleets, contractors, gas distributors, fire-safety suppliers and music retailers rather than by metal processors. The 25 percent duty would fall on the whole entered value of a crane or trailer, not on its steel2. The notice’s list of questions shows what Commerce wants to learn: the metal intensity of each product, whether import volumes undermine national security, whether domestic production “can meet domestic demand,” and the effect on the economy of including them1.
The administration has already shown how it weighs those users. In June, Proclamation 11032 cut rates on agricultural and mobile industrial equipment because, in the Secretary’s account, “recent circumstances” were affecting the industries that use them3. It said “American farmers use agricultural equipment to produce the food upon which our Nation relies” and that material-handling equipment “enables industrial logistics and factory operations”3. Today’s notice files the new cranes and farm trailers under those reduced schedules rather than at the standard rate1. Tanker trailers and other trailers get no such treatment1.
Trailers already carry trade-remedy exposure. The Journal reported in June on the antidumping and countervailing orders on container chassis, and on August 4 Commerce preliminarily found dumping margins of 10.19 percent for Hyundai de Mexico and 3.21 percent for Utility Trailer Manufacturing de México in the separate van-type trailer case9. Whether the proposed 8716.31 and 8716.40 lines overlap those scopes is a classification question the notice does not address.
On the benefit side, the stated aim is capacity. Proclamation 11021 reported domestic capacity utilization of about 50.4 percent for aluminum and 77.2 percent for steel, against the Secretary’s target of a sustained 80 percent2. The notice offers no estimate of how much new metal demand the 14 groups would draw to U.S. mills1.
The longer view: from a cost test to a weight test
Derivatives first entered the program in January 2020. Proclamation 9980 extended the 2018 duties to steel nails, aluminum stranded wire and bumper and body stampings, on findings that foreign producers had raised shipments “to circumvent the duties”5. It set out a three-part test. The metal had to account for two-thirds or more of the cost of materials; imports had to have risen year on year since June 1, 2018; and that rise had to exceed the 4 percent average growth in all U.S. imports over the same period5. It recited the numbers: imports of steel nails and similar articles up 33 percent from June 2018 to May 2019 over the year before, and aluminum stranded wire up 152 percent5.
The 2025 submission process widened the funnel but kept outside requests at its center, and it charged duty only on metal content4. The 2026 power drops both features. The test is now whether products “tend to be composed predominately” of metal “by weight” and whether imports “threaten to undermine” earlier actions, with the government choosing the candidates and the duty attaching to full value1,2. Proclamation 11021 also lets Commerce and the Trade Representative “reconsider their own inclusion decisions, including by modifying or reversing” them2. The power therefore runs in both directions.
The next steps are short. Comments close August 27 under docket BIS-2026-03311. A final inclusion requires a joint finding with the Trade Representative and a Federal Register notice from both2. The clause 5 reduced rate that the agricultural trailers would join expires at 11:59 p.m. on December 31, 20272.