The Commerce Department’s inspector general will probe the agency’s awarding of exemptions to the Trump administration’s steel and aluminum tariffs, according to internal documents circulated this week. Liberal lawmakers have repeatedly raised questions over the process, citing a lack of transparency over the how the department makes decisions.
The department’s Office of the Inspector General said it had begun the probe in an internal letter dated Monday. The investigation will cover the processes for assigning exclusions to the administration’s 25 percent steel tariff and 10 percent aluminum tariff.
“We are initiating an audit of the Bureau of Industry and Security’s and the International Trade Administration’s processes and procedures for reviewing and adjudicating product exclusion requests for aluminum and steel tariffs,” said Carol Rice, assistant inspector general. Rice said the purpose of the inquiry was to determine whether “exclusion request decisions are reached in a consistent and transparent manner.”
The Trump administration has granted about one out of every five requests made to date by companies to have a product excluded from the new steel tariffs. Businesses can receive an exclusion for a particular product if they can prove that providing it wouldn’t harm the “national security” premise for the tariffs. In most cases, they argue that the product cannot be obtained except from overseas.
[Related: Business alarmed as Trump administration refuses exemptions for China tariffs]
As of Oct. 8, 39,279 steel and 4,939 aluminum exclusion requests have been filed, according to the department. Overall, 7,670 requests regarding steel were approved, and so were 663 requests regarding aluminum.
Lawmakers have been pushing for an inquiry for months, arguing the process by which the requests were granted appears to favor particular companies. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said in a letter Wednesday to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that “[Y]ou owe the American people an answer for why, after President Trump promised that his tariff program would help American companies, the process appears to be favoring foreign-owned firms with U.S. subsidiaries over American firms by allowing them to import foreign steel.”
