Last Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced that the Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) had begun granting its first product exclusions from the Section 232 tariffs on imports of steel.In the announcement, Secretary Ross said, “this first set of exclusions confirm what we have said from the beginning – that we are taking a balanced approach that accounts for the needs of downstream industries while also recognizing the threatened impairment of our national security caused by imports.”Exclusions are being granted after a thorough and transparent process of public comment and analysis to determine whether domestic industry can provide those products of a satisfactory quality and in sufficient quantity, as well as whether it is in the U.S. national security interest to grant an exclusion for a specific product.Exclusions generally are granted if there is no domestic availability and there are no overriding national security concerns with regard to the specific product. The 42 exclusion requests being issued cover seven different companies importing steel products from Japan, Sweden, Belgium, Germany, and China.The Department of Commerce will also be denying 56 steel exclusion requests from 11 different companies.Commerce will be posting decisions on steel and aluminum exclusion requests on an ongoing basis. Granted and denied exclusion requests can be viewed at regulations.gov under steel docket number BIS-2018-0006 and aluminum docket number BIS-2018-0002.Please contact your account team if you have any questions or would like additional information.