President Donald Trump announced plans to double tariffs on steel and aluminum imports while visiting a US Steel plant in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, on Friday. An existing 25% tariff on aluminum, steel and related metal articles will reportedly be increased to 50% on June 4.
These tariffs expanded on duties Trump imposed during his first presidency, and they were just hiked to 25% in February. Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 gives the president the ability to circumvent Congress and impose tariffs on imported products if he deems them a threat to national security.
“If you don’t have steel, you don’t have a country — you don’t have a country,” Trump said in a press conference. “You can’t make a military. What are we going to do? Say, ‘let’s go to China to get our steel for the army tanks and the boats and ships?’”
Many components in solar arrays are composed of steel and aluminum, including racking, mounts and wiring. Since they were enacted in 2018, Section 232 tariffs have caused pricing volatility in the solar racking market.
