What a 270-Day Commerce Report and an April 2026 Proclamation Mean for Section 232 Tariffs

Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 allows tariffs on imports that the Commerce Secretary determines threaten to impair national security. The process runs in two stages. The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) investigates, and the President then decides whether to act; recent actions have been taken through proclamations.

Each stage carries statutory deadlines. The rules that sit on top of the statute, covering which products are taxed and how products are added or removed, have changed several times since 2025. The most recent major change is a proclamation signed on April 2, 2026.

Three Statutory Clocks Set the Pace

Commerce must submit a report to the President within 270 days of starting an investigation. The President then has up to 90 days after receiving that report to decide whether to concur and what action to take. If action is taken, it must be put in place within 15 days, and the President must send Congress a written statement of reasons within 30 days of the decision.

Taken together, these periods have a practical meaning. If the report arrives on day 270 and the President uses the full 90 days, the decision falls 360 days after the investigation began, and implementation can follow up to 15 days later. The 90-day period runs from receipt of the report, not from the start of the investigation.

From Investigation to the Commerce Report

An investigation can begin when a department head or another interested party asks the Commerce Secretary to act. The Secretary can also start one independently. BIS conducts the work, and the Commerce Secretary must immediately notify the Secretary of Defense. Commerce can end an investigation if the party that requested it withdraws the request.

The report must cover the national security effects of the imports and recommend action or inaction. Commerce must weigh defense factors, such as domestic production capacity for defense needs, and economic factors, such as foreign competition and the unemployment that may result. The statute requires that the parts of the report without classified or proprietary information be published in the Federal Register. CRS says Commerce regulations require an executive summary to be published, with the full report open for public inspection. There is no specified timeline for publication.

The Presidential Decision and the Proclamation

If Commerce finds no threat, no further action is taken. If it finds a threat, the President decides whether to concur and, if so, whether to act. Any action must specify its nature and duration. Recent Section 232 actions have been set out in presidential proclamations, which are then implemented through Harmonized Tariff Schedule changes.

The April 2026 metals changes came through Proclamation 11021, signed April 2, 2026, according to CRS and EY. EY says most changes took effect at 12:01 a.m. EST on April 6, 2026.

Follow-up actions are also built into the statute. If the President negotiates with a trading partner and no agreement is reached within 180 days, or an agreement is not carried out or is ineffective, the President must take additional actions and publish them in the Federal Register. Congress can also disapprove presidential actions on petroleum imports under a 1980 amendment.

How Exclusions and Inclusions Have Changed

Exclusions remove covered products from a tariff. BIS says processing of steel and aluminum exclusion requests ended at 11:59 p.m. ET on February 10, 2025, under Proclamations 10895 and 10896. General approved exclusions and country-level alternative arrangements were revoked effective March 12, 2025. Exclusions active on February 10 remain in place until they expire or their volume runs out. BIS says it is no longer accepting or issuing exclusions, and its exclusions portal is read-only.

Inclusions add derivative products to existing tariffs. BIS's process, set out in a May 2, 2025 Federal Register notice, accepted requests in two-week windows and posted them to a public docket. That notice also rescinded the earlier exclusion rules published from 2018 through May 2024. CRS says the inclusion process added more than 400 product codes in August 2025.

The sources conflict on whether inclusions are still open. BIS's inclusions page, as read, still describes the process as accepting requests three times a year. CRS and EY both say the April 2, 2026 proclamation terminated the inclusion processes for steel, aluminum and copper. Under the new proclamation, the Commerce Secretary and the U.S. Trade Representative can jointly add derivative articles to the tariff scope. CRS says the two may jointly determine to add products within the scope of tariffs.

What the Rules Mean for Importer Costs

For costs, the tax base has changed. Under the April 2026 proclamation, tariffs "shall apply to the full customs value of the imported product, regardless of metal content." CRS says the June 2025 rules had taxed most derivatives only on their steel or aluminum content. Importers that paid duty on metal content alone will see a different base for those products.

Rates now depend on the annex a product sits in. Annex I-A carries 50%, and Annex I-B carries 25%. Derivatives that are at least 95% U.S.-sourced steel, aluminum or copper pay 10%. Annex II goods have no Section 232 tariff, though other duties may still apply. Annex III sets reduced rates through December 31, 2027. For Annex III goods, where the regular Column 1 duty is below 15%, or 10% for U.S.-sourced goods, the Section 232 tariff makes up the difference. Where the regular duty already meets the threshold, the Section 232 tariff is 0%.

A weight threshold applies outside Harmonized Tariff Schedule chapters 72, 73, 74 and 76. Under CRS, the Annex I-B and Annex III goods in other chapters fall outside the duty when steel, aluminum and copper make up less than 15% of the article's weight. EY describes the cut-off as repealing the ad valorem duties on derivative goods comprised of less than 15% steel, aluminum or copper. Russia-specific codes carry 10% to 50% for steel and copper, and 200% for aluminum, per CRS.

For planning, each product needs four checks: the annex it falls under, the share of its weight made of steel, aluminum or copper, whether the metal was smelted or melted in the United States, and its full customs value. CRS also lists technical corrections to the Harmonized Tariff Schedule published April 29, 2026, at 91 FR 23056.