Trump Stuns Logistics Industry With Wider Tariffs on Metal
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President Donald Trump stunned the logistics industry Aug. 15 by widening his steel and aluminum tariffs to include more than 400 consumer items that contain the metals, such as motorcycles and tableware. Customs brokers and importers in the U.S. were given little notice to account for the change, which went into effect Aug. 18 and did not exclude goods in transit.
The new tariff inclusion list was posted by the Customs and Border Protection agency just as many were leaving for the weekend and appeared in the Federal Register on Aug. 19, creating fresh headaches for trade professionals. Official guidance has been muddled, especially for goods already on their way to the U.S., and it’s unclear whether the metals levies stack on top of country-by-country tariffs.
Having weathered six months of Trump’s trade war and a pandemic that triggered mass supply disruptions, it’s hard to rattle the freight carriers, cargo owners and middlemen that keep cross-border commerce moving. But the scope and implementation speed of this latest notice took many by surprise.
“We’ve had a lot of these 11th-hour implementations throughout 2025, this one in particular impacts every single client I have to an enormous degree,” Michigan-based customs broker Shannon Bryant said in an interview.
“Earlier announcements at least had some in-transit exemptions so at least importers could make reasonable buying decisions,” said Bryant, president of trade compliance advisory service Trade IQ. “This one was unique in that way — it’s very much a ‘gotcha.’ ”
The new list includes auto parts, chemicals, plastics and furniture components — demonstrating the reach of Trump’s authority to use sectoral tariffs. That is separate from the executive power he invoked for his so-called reciprocal tariffs.
“Basically, if it’s shiny, metallic, or remotely related to steel or aluminum, it’s probably on the list,” Brian Baldwin, a vice president of customs in the U.S. at logistics giant Kuehne + Nagel International AG, wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “This isn’t just another tariff — it’s a strategic shift in how steel and aluminum derivatives are regulated.”
Kuehne + Nagel ranks No. 8 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest logistics companies in North America, No. 1 on the airfreight forwarders list, and No. 2 on the ocean forwarders list.
Compliance Costs
The difficulty with applying tariffs to derivative products lies in determining what percentage of an item is made from the targeted materials.
Flexport, a digital freight forwarder, said in a blog post that “for many brands, this means chasing suppliers for detailed data: aluminum weight, percentage of customs value, and country of cast/smelt.”
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The compliance burden, Flexport said, “is significant.”
Flexport ranks No. 33 on the TT100 logistics list.
This tranche of tariffs is also particularly expansive, including items such as motorcycles, cargo handling equipment, baby booster seats, tableware and personal care products that come in metal containers or packaging.
Jason Miller, a professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University, conservatively estimates that the metals tariffs now cover about $328 billion worth of goods, based on 2024 import data. That’s six times greater than in 2018 and a big jump from the $191 billion worth of goods covered prior to the change, he said in an email to Bloomberg News.
Broker’s Plea
Bryant, whose clients include cosmetics and commercial cookware importers, sent a letter to her elected officials in Washington on Aug. 18 warning that the complexity of overlapping tariffs is becoming unworkable even for professionals. “For small importers,” she wrote, “it’s impossible.”
“I’m trying to think of a client that’s not impacted,” Bryant said. “These are American companies that employ American people that are being ambushed by their own government.”
Trump first imposed steel and aluminum tariffs in 2018 with the goal of boosting U.S. output by making it more expensive for Americans to buy foreign material.
But several major suppliers including Canada, Mexico and the European Union were ultimately exempted, and U.S. industries have said they’re still struggling to compete with imports.
Big Steel Applauds
In June, Trump fulfilled a campaign promise by doubling the levy on steel and aluminum to 50% and also sought feedback from industry on how to broaden it further.
Lourenco Goncalves, CEO of U.S. steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs Inc., applauded the expanded tariff list in a statement on Aug. 18, thanking the Trump administration for “taking decisive and concrete action that will deter tariff circumvention occurring in plain sight with stainless and electrical steel derivative products.”
There’s very likely more to come. At the end of July, the Trump administration imposed a 50% duty on semi-finished copper imports valued at more than $15 billion and ordered officials to come up with a plan to slap tariffs on an array of other copper-intensive goods.
“This isn’t over,” said Pete Mento, DSV’s global customs director, in a social media post on Aug. 18. “The next list will surely be for copper and I expect that to be equally as miserable.”
DSV ranks No. 11 on the TT100 logistics list.
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