“If you’re an executive in the boardroom, are you really going to tell your board it’s the time to expand that assembly line?” said John Murphy, senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The top steel exporters to the U.S. are Canada, Mexico, Brazil, South Korea and Japan, with exports from Taiwan and Vietnam growing at a fast pace, according to the International Trade Administration. Imports from China, the world's largest steel producer, account for only a small fraction of what the U.S. buys.
The lion's share of U.S. aluminum imports comes from Canada.