Pablo Pardo (El Mundo) | On Mondays, tariffs. That seems to be the strategy in trade policy of the President of the United States, Donald Trump. This time, a 25% tariff on all imports of steel and aluminum from that country. Spain is the tenth largest exporter of steel to the US, with sales to that country amounting to 290,000 tons in the last 11 months and one week, according to data from the US Public Administration. The value of those exports was $263 million, according to the COMTRADE database from the United Nations. This figure is 2.2% lower than that of 2023, despite the fact that the US increased its purchases of steel from abroad by 4%.
As for aluminum, Spain ranks twenty-eighth, with 19,664 tons in 2024, which reached a value of €132.93 million. The main exporters of steel to the US are, in order from largest to smallest, Canada, Brazil, and Mexico; in the case of aluminum, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, and China. Trump already imposed tariffs on imports of these two metals in 2018, triggering a trade war. In July of last year, Joe Biden’s government changed technical specifications for aluminum imports, which some viewed as a covert tariff.
Furthermore, Trump has stated that tomorrow or the day after he will announce tariffs on countries that tax imports from the United States. It is very likely that the European Union—or members of the European Union—will be affected by this latest measure. However, the President of the US has declared that these tariffs will not come into effect automatically. This means that Trump is willing to withdraw them in exchange for some concession from his trading partners.
