President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a proclamation to overhaul his steel, aluminum and copper tariffs, adjusting how duties are applied to imports of the raw metals and downstream products containing the metals.
The president imposed 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum in March 2025 over national security concerns, and in the months following, hiked them to 50% and expanded the scope to include hundreds of finished products that are made from the metals, known as “derivatives." The moves raised costs for ag input producers and providers, including across machinery and construction.
Copper tariffs that were adopted last August also face a 50% rate.
As part of a string of actions announced Thursday, the administration is narrowing the scope and reducing the rate of the duties on derivative products, according to a White House fact sheet published Thursday.
Products with metal content that make up less than 15% of the overall weight will no longer be subject to the duties. Importers of derivative products for which the metals make up more than 15% of the weight will still pay the tariff, but the rate will drop to 25%.
However, this tariff will now reflect the entire value of the product. Previously, it was calculated using only the value of the metal inside the product.
So, while some finished products may see a tariff cut, some could see an overall tariff increase, if the value of the entire product is substantially greater than the value of the metal.
“For many products, it'll be lower. For some products, it'll be a little higher,” a senior administration official told reporters during a press call Thursday. But the official stressed that the new system would simplify tariff calculations for businesses.
“It's easier, it's simpler, it's more straightforward,” the senior official argued.
Certain industrial and electrical equipment will also face a reduced tariff rate of 15% through 2027, the fact sheet says, while products made abroad but using American-made metals will see a 10% duty.
In addition to adjusting how downstream products are tariffed, the administration is also revisiting how duties are applied to raw steel, aluminum and copper imports. Instead of calculating the tariff for products like steel coil and aluminum sheets based on the price paid for the imported product, the official said the tariff will reflect the value of the product “paid by U.S. customers, in America.”
Asked whether the official is anticipating the adjustments to increase the tariff revenue collected by the U.S. government – and therefore the tariff burden faced by importers – the official said that the adjustments on the derivative products would likely have “no material economic difference.”
“That is not a consequential change,” they added.
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The adjustment on the products made almost entirely from the metals, like the coils and sheets used in manufacturing, however, would likely increase the collected revenue, the official said.
After the initial metals duties were applied, the administration did not receive the tariff revenues expected on the raw products, the official said. They argued that this was because importers reported “artificial” prices below the market price.
“The value of steel coming into America dramatically reduced after we announced the tariff,” the senior official said. “It was artificial. So, we're just getting rid of the artificial nature.”
Segments of the agriculture and food industries have been hit particularly hard by the metals tariffs, including the canned food sector and the dairy sector. But the tariffs have touched products used by every grower and rancher in the country in some form, Pam Johnson, a former president of the National Corn Growers Association, told Agri-Pulse earlier this year.
“We are disproportionate users of steel and aluminum in everything that we do,” she said. “We need it for machinery, and parts for machinery, that we go buy. We need it for irrigation systems, fencing our livestock, buildings and our grain bins and processing facilities.”
Accordingly, any adjustment in the metals tariffs that raises tariffs collected could eventually show up in higher input prices.
The dairy industry is particularly focused on the steel and aluminum tariffs, Becky Rasdall Vargas, senior vice president for trade and workforce policy at the International Dairy Foods Association, told Agri-Pulse ahead of Thursday’s announcement.
Dairy processing is among the fastest-growing sectors in U.S. ag, with around $11 billion in announced investments across 19 states.
“If you think about all the equipment needed in a dairy processing plant, it's quite a good amount of steel, whether it's something as simple as a catwalk grate, or the actual blenders and mixers,” Rasdall Vargas said, and that’s on top of the construction materials themselves.
Even if products with small amounts of metal content see some tariff relief, Rasdall Vargas said that the industry will still be facing higher costs on investments to increase production capacity than they would absent the tariffs.
“The amount of investment that we're doing, it just dwarfs any potential derivative or multi-component impact,” she said.
Dairy producers understand “the objective the administration is trying to achieve” and the need to support domestic manufacturing. But she added that the sector also wants to see continued growth and investments.
“It's kind of hard to figure out how to make those meet in the middle,” she said.
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