Requests for tariff relief hit red tape, delays

Companies seeking WASHINGTON— relief from President Donald Trump’s taxes on imported steel and aluminumran into long delays and cumbersome paperwork, a federal watchdog found.

TheU.S. GovernmentAccountability Office reported that the Commerce Department, overwhelmed by companies lobbying to avoid the tariffs, could not meet its own deadline for processing around three-fourths of the requests.

AndCommerce rejected nearly a fifth of the applications before weighing themerits of the appeal because the paperwork was incomplete or included errors.

Trump’s tariffswere controversial from the beginning. Invoking a rarely used provision of a 1962 law to label steel and aluminum imports a threat to U.S. national security, Trumpslapped tariffs of 25% on foreign steel and 10% on aluminum in 2018. The idea was to strengthen U.S. producers of steel and aluminum by shielding them from foreign competition.

U.S. companies that relied on foreign steel and aluminumwere allowed to appeal for relief from the tariffs, primarily by showing that they could not get themetals they needed in theUnited States.

In a report released late Tuesday, GAOsaid that the Commerce Department was inundated with 106,000 requests for exclusion from the tariffs -- far more than expected. The department was supposed to reach a decision on each case in 60 to 149 days, dependingonwhetherU.S. aluminumandsteel producers objected to the request.