Trump has increased tariffs on steel and aluminum to 50%: How will this affect Ukrainian exports?

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that will raise tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from 25% to 50% effective June 4. As evidenced by the executive order, Trump has concluded that increasing the tariffs was necessary to regulate imports of steel and aluminum products and their derivatives to eliminate a threat to national security, based on current data.

Until March 12, when the 25% tariff on steel and steel product imports took effect, Ukraine had a temporary exemption from tariffs introduced by the Biden administration.

The Ministry of Economy of Ukraine stated that the implementation of tariffs would negatively impact the Ukrainian metallurgical industry. Overall, the volume of foreign trade with the US is not particularly significant for Ukraine. In the structure of goods exports, the US’ share was only 2.1% last year, amounting to a total of $869M, while the share of imports was 4.9%, or $3.4B.

The limited presence of Ukrainian goods in the US results from challenging access to this market, intense competition, and high logistics costs.