The Department of Commerce and the Office of the United States Trade Representative announced the release of the seventh and final set of products to be excluded from the safeguard measure on steel products this year.
In accordance with World Trade Organization rules designed to allow for the temporary restructuring of a domestic industry, the President announced temporary steel safeguard measures on March 5, 2002. After filing the steel tariff policy, the President directed the Department of Commerce and the Office of the United States Trade Representative to consider requests to exclude certain products from the safeguard action.
After receiving feedback, the DOC announced that 178 products were excluded because it was determined that they are not sufficiently available from U.S. producers and that excluding these products would not undermine the effectiveness of the safeguard on steel products. The decision to exclude these products was based upon a full consideration of information submitted by U.S. steel consumers, U.S. steel producers and foreign steel producers.
This concludes the review of all pending exclusion requests that were filed on or before May 20, 2002. There will be another opportunity later this year for parties to submit exclusion requests for consideration by March 2003. This process will be initiated in November 2002.