Canada Provides Updated Information On New Penalties On Chinese Metal Imports

As Connecting the Dots reported at the time, in August the Canadian government said it would impose significant new trade penalties on steel and aluminum and other imports from China. Specifically, the government said that, effective Oct. 1, 2024, there would be a 100 percent surtax on electric vehicles (EVs) manufactured in China. Effective Oct. 22, 2024, there would be a 25 percent surtax will be applied to a list of selected Chinese steel and aluminum products.

The final list of metals products that will be subject to the tariffs is available at this link.

According to CBC, the government has conceded that it may need to offer firms some relief from the tariffs on metals products. Last week, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said, “The government intends to implement a framework to consider requests for tariff relief. Potential factors that may be included in the framework are situations of short supply.”

In a press release, Freeland’s office noted that, despite softening global demand for industrial metals, China has increased its steelmaking capacity by 18.6 million metric tons, a figure that is more than Canada’s total production capacity, since 2018. Meanwhile, China’s primary aluminum capacity has grown from 11 percent of total global production to 59 percent over the last two decades.

Read more about the tariffs at this link.