A significant tariff concession may be on the horizon, as the Trump administration acknowledged Friday that it could scale back some tariffs on goods containing steel and aluminium.
A Friday report from the Financial Times outlined the White House’s plan to reduce tariffs on some products made with the metals, from ovens to drink cans. Trump’s team has responded that any decision isn’t final, but this potential concession would be the latest among more than half a dozen moves to lower tariffs over the past three months.
The changes range from a reduction of food tariffs to a deescalation of tensions with trading partners to new tariff plans with exclusions so wide that they are expected to have little impact on consumers’ pocketbooks.
President Trump after making an announcement at the White House on Feb. 12. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images) · SAUL LOEB via Getty Images
The administration’s shift in its tariff approach has been apparent since last November, when affordability emerged as a potent political issue that led to Republican election losses that month.
And these moves have already had some apparent effects. Friday’s cooler-than-expected inflation reading saw some politically sensitive food prices in decline.
The price of coffee — a key area of White House focus — fell 0.9% between December and January. Similarly in focus have been prices for beef and veal, with those prices down by 0.4% over the same stretch. That came as the overall Consumer Price Index showed a price increase of 0.2% in January from a month earlier.
Read more: January CPI breakdown: Gas prices ease, housing costs remain elevated
The move also comes as a political backlash to tariffs is evident, even among Republicans. Earlier this week, six GOP lawmakers crossed party lines to reject Trump’s tariffs on Canada.
“This may be an indication that President Trump’s trade policy is moving into a new, more nuanced phase,” international trade lawyer Ted Murphy of the firm Sidley Austin wrote in a note to Yahoo Finance on Friday.
Murphy added that an initial tariff phase — defined in his view by big tariffs, quickly imposed — is being gradually replaced by a recognition “that, at least in some cases, expanding tariffs may actually do more harm than good.”
A possible action on some steel and aluminium tariffs would represent perhaps the sharpest pivot yet.
Steel and aluminum tariffs have been a priority for Trump stretching back to his first term and were some of the earliest new tariffs announced last year when he returned to office. Trump team visits to US steel plants that they say are being bolstered by these tariffs have also become a regular feature of administration travel.
