Hydraulic Motors
Sourcing Guide & Market Intelligence

United States announces new tariffs on all imported steel

• In February 2025, the United States announced 25.0% tariffs on all imported steel with no exemptions or exceptions. The tariffs took effect on March 12, 2025. On June 4th, these tariffs were increased further to 50%. These tariffs were not impacted by a recent court decision that temporarily suspended duties on certain goods as they were implemented under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act.
• Previously, countries such as Canada, Mexico, and Brazil, the top exporters of steel to the United States, had exemptions from tariffs. These have now been removed and all imported steel, regardless of origin, will be subject to the 50.0% tariff. However, on May 8th, the US announced an agreement with the United Kingdom to remove all levies on steel exported from the UK.
• When tariffs on steel imports were introduced in March 2018, they contributed to an increase in the price of steel and steel products. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the price of steel-milled products increased by 10.2% in the year after the tariffs were implemented. This market heavily relies on steel as an input and may be impacted by this policy.

Tariffs may drive up prices and lead times for electrical equipment

• On April 9th, the Trump Administration paused the implementation of country-specific tariffs and replaced them with 10.0% blanket tariffs on all imports. On May 12th, an agreement was reached between the US and China to reduce rates from a baseline of 145.0% to 30.0% for most imported goods. On May 28th, the U.S. Court of International Trade issued a ruling halting many of the tariffs levied by the Trump administration. This ruling has been appealed, and the tariffs will remain in effect pending further judicial decisions. This ruling does not apply to steel, aluminum, and automobile tariffs issued under Section 232. Additionally, tariffs could be reissued under a variety of other sections of U.S. trade law. As such, ProcurementIQ will continue to monitor and update analysis as new information becomes available.
• The US power generation and distribution sector is highly reliant on imports, with imports of electrical equipment accounting for an estimated 56.7% of annual domestic consumption.
• Due to the complexity of most power generation and distribution machinery, most components or raw materials included in these products originate outside the United States, even if the finished machinery is assembled domestically.
• Due to this reliance on imports, the Yale Budget Lab currently estimates that tariffs will increase electrical equipment prices will increase by 4.2% on average.
• Further, tariffs present complications for the long, often multinational production cycles common for more complex electrical equipment, leading American Electric Power and other energy sector leaders to warn of shortages and increased lead times for electric equipment.

The FBI has warned that Chinese government hackers could disrupt critical infrastructure in the United States in the event of a conflict with China.

• The FBI announced on January 31 that it had thwarted an attempt by the Chinese government hacking group “Volt Typhoon” to plant malware onto electric power, water treatment and transportation systems in the United States using compromised end-of-life small office/home office (SOHO) routers from Cisco and Netgear. End-of-life devices have been discontinued by manufacturers and no longer receive software patches to eliminate vulnerabilities, which makes these devices attractive targets for hackers.
• US officials assess that China might disrupt critical US infrastructure to prevent the United States from responding to a Chinese attack on Taiwan. Volt Typhoon has been particularly active in Hawaii and Guam, which house some of the largest US military and naval installations in the Pacific.
• The FBI announced on September 18 that it had disrupted a botnet from another Chinese government hacking group known as “Flax Typhoon”. Flax Typhoon had infected 260,000 networking devices around the world, including SOHO routers, internet protocol (IP) cameras, digital video recorders (DVRs), and network-attached storage (NAS) devices.n
• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recommends that organizations use its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog to identify any vulnerabilities in their systems. Furthermore, organizations can subscribe to receive KEV Catalog updates from the agency and may contact the agency for advice.