The Trump’s administration issued its new tariff policy on imports of steel and aluminum into the United States on 8th March, 2018. The tariff covers a wide range of steel and aluminum articles that may has significant effect on exporting piping materials to the US from China. Since some of our clients are from the United States, we have to pay careful attention to the new policy. The tariff will be imposed on several groups of steel and aluminum products which are defined in the HS codes respectively as:

HS Codes for Steel Articles

7206.10 through 7216.50, 7216.99 through 7301.10, 7302.10, 7302.40 through 7302.90, and 7304.10 through 7306.90.

HS Codes for Aluminum Articles

(a) unwrought aluminum (HTS 7601); (b) aluminum bars, rods, and profiles (HTS 7604); (c) aluminum wire (HTS 7605); (d) aluminum plate, sheet, strip, and foil (flat rolled products) (HTS 7606 and 7607); (e) aluminum tubes and pipes and tube and pipe fitting (HTS 7608 and 7609); and (f) aluminum castings and forgings (HTS 7616.99.51.60 and 7616.99.51.70).

Unfortunately, seamless and welded pipes or tubes in either carbon steel, alloy steel or stainless steel fall into the “steel articles” group. Apparently, aluminum pipes and fittings have no luck either. The silver lining is that many other piping materials are not covered by the new regulation/proclamation. These piping materials include carbon steel flanges (HS code: 73079100.00), stainless steel flanges (HS Code: 73072100.00), carbon steel pipe fittings (HS code:73079300.00 or 73079900.00), stainless steel pipe fittings (HS code: 73072900.00). Piping materials made from nonferrous metals are also not mentioned by the proclamation. Typically, these materials include pipes, tubes, fittings, flanges, plates, and valves made from nickel and nickel alloy, titanium and titanium alloy, zirconium and zirconium alloys, etc.