White House official accuses Korea of flooding U.S. with subsidized steel

A White House official on Thursday accused Korea of flooding the U.S. market with heavily subsidized steel products and Chinese steel shipped through the country, warning that Washington is taking action to crack down on such purported measures.

“Korea is inundating the [United States] with highly subsidized steel and steel transshipped from China,” Peter Navarro, the White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, wrote on X.

“We are cracking down,” he added, sharing a video clip of him speaking with reporters earlier this week on U.S. trade.

In the news clip from Tuesday, Navarro said that he wants to “call out” Korea in particular for “inundating” the U.S. market with highly subsidized Korean steel and transshipped steel from China.

“Even though we have very high tariffs, 50 percent on steel, they are blowing past that because they cheat, and we’re going to be doing something about that.”

Foreign steelmakers in the United States face tariffs under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which allows the U.S. president to adjust imports deemed to threaten national security, as well as other trade remedy measures.

Korean Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan last month urged Washington to pay close attention to difficulties facing Korean companies investing in the United States and support the project by easing tariffs on equipment and materials that need to be shipped from Korea.

Last month, Hyundai-Posco Louisiana Steel, a joint venture between Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group and Posco Holdings, broke ground for an electric arc furnace-based integrated steel mill construction project in Louisiana scheduled to be completed in 2029.

The project is part of Hyundai Motor’s $26 billion U.S. investment plan announced last year. Posco has taken a 20 percent stake in the project.

Yonhap