Removal of 31 General Approved Exclusions Under Section 232 Steel and Aluminum Tariff Exclusions Process

Mechanism

The December 14, 2020 interim final rule (85 FR 81060) introduced General Approved Exclusions as a new pathway within the Section 232 exclusions process. GAEs were blanket, pre-approved exclusions that applied automatically to any importer of a matching HTS product — eliminating the need to file individual exclusion requests. This streamlined process was designed for product categories where Commerce had already determined that domestic supply was insufficient.

After receiving public comments and conducting additional analysis of the exclusion-request database, Commerce found that 30 of the GAEs added in the December 14 rule no longer satisfied the criteria (i.e., domestic producers had either expanded capacity or signaled ability to supply the affected products). A 31st steel GAE was removed as a conforming change following a U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) decision relevant to the underlying product.

Net effect: importers who had been relying on the automatic GAE pathway for these 31 product codes must now file individual section 232 exclusion requests (subject to public comment and Commerce review) or absorb the underlying duties — 25% ad valorem for steel products, 10% ad valorem for aluminum products.

Affected product categories

The rule covered 26 steel GAEs and 4 aluminum GAEs whose specific HTS codes are enumerated in the Federal Register text (86 FR 70003). Categories spanned specialty and semi-finished steel mill products and certain aluminum mill products where the original domestic-supply gap had narrowed by late 2021.

Downstream implications

• Raises effective tariff burden on a discrete set of steel/aluminum importers who relied on

the automatic GAE exemption; sourcing from non-US domestic producers becomes more costly.

• Signals Commerce intent to actively police GAE eligibility over time, reducing certainty

for importers who treat GAE status as permanent.

• Pushes affected importers toward the individual exclusion-request track, which carries

processing delays and denial risk.

• The December 2020 GAE framework and this corrective removal were direct antecedents to the

May 2024 revisions to the entire Section 232 exclusions process (2024-05-20-us-bis-section-232-steel-aluminum-exclusions-process-revisions).

Open questions

• Whether the removed GAEs have since been reinstated via individual exclusion grants.
• How many downstream manufacturers were affected and whether sourcing shifted to domestic

mills or alternative import origins.