Metals tariffs jump to 50%

The new metal tariffs are not a simple rate hike. On April 2, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation that rewrote how U.S. tariffs on steel, aluminum, and copper are calculated, and the new system took effect on April 6. Goods made entirely or almost entirely of those metals now face a 50% tariff on their full value. Derivative products that are “substantially made” of those metals face 25% on their full value. That sounds technical. It is not. It means the government is no longer just taxing the metal inside a product. It is taxing the whole thing (whitehouse.gov, chrobinson.com). That shift matters more than the headline number. A steel coil was already easy to classify as steel. A truck trailer, rail component, appliance, or industrial assembly was not. Under the new rules, many of those products now get swept into a flatter system based on how much steel, aluminum, or copper they contain, with Customs told to apply the duty to the entire customs value. For importers, that turns metal content from a line item into the organizing principle of the invoice (cbp.gov, supplychaindive.com). The administration also built escape hatches into the same proclamation. Products made abroad entirely from American steel, aluminum, or copper get a 10% tariff instead. Certain industrial and electrical-grid equipment gets a temporary 15% rate through 2027. Goods with 15% or less of the covered metals are dropped from Section 232 coverage altogether. The point is not subtle. Washington wants manufacturers to keep using metal, but to use American metal, and to document that choice in a way Customs can verify (whitehouse.gov, ghy.com). Copper is what makes this round different. Steel and aluminum had already been pushed to 50% in 2025 under the same Section 232 national-security authority. Copper was added later, after a separate Commerce investigation and a July 2025 proclamation that put semi-finished copper products and copper-heavy derivatives into the same tariff architecture. The April 2026 order did not just keep copper in the club. It folded copper into the new full-value system, which is why this feels less like an extension of old steel politics and more like a broad industrial policy for electrification-era materials (congress.gov, whitehouse.gov, whitehouse.gov). That helps explain why a small mining company in Michigan suddenly showed up in the story. Highland Copper said this week that it had been acknowledged by the White House as part of the push to expand domestic mining capacity. The company is developing the Copperwood and White Pine North projects in the Upper Peninsula, and it plainly sees the tariff regime as a demand signal from Washington: if imported copper will be taxed harder, domestic copper becomes more valuable before a shovel even hits the ground (markets.businessinsider.com, highlandcopper.com). The costs, though, do not stay inside the metals sector. Because the tariff now lands on the full value of many imported products, it compounds through supply chains that buy fabricated parts rather than raw metal. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated before the proclamation that a similar shift on steel and aluminum derivatives alone could raise about $70 billion in revenue over a decade. In Colorado, officials are already describing tariffs as a broad tax on the state economy, with Treasurer Dave Young saying businesses in the state paid $1.1 billion in tariffs in 2025 and that the burden is rippling through agriculture, construction, energy, and aerospace (crfb.org, kunc.org, denverpost.com). That is the real shape of the policy. It is not just a wall around steel mills. It is a pricing system for modern manufacturing. It reaches from imported sheet metal to transformers and railcars, from customs paperwork to mine financing, and from a White House annex listing tariff codes to a copper project in Michigan that now has presidential trade policy in its investor materials (whitehouse.gov, markets.businessinsider.com).