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Key takeaways:
Fastmarkets’ weekly steel hot-rolled coil index, fob mill Canada was calculated at C$54.96 per cwt (C$1,099.20 per short ton) on Thursday April 9, rising by 1.16% or C$0.63 per cwt from C$54.33 per cwt in the previous assessment.
Inputs were collected in a range of C$53-55 per cwt in the buyer sub-index, representing deals and mill offers at the high end of the range and assessments of general spot market activity.
Inputs in the seller sub-index were rolled over due to a lack of liquidity.
Converted to US dollars, the Canadian HRC price is equivalent to $39.79 per cwt ($795.80 per short ton).
On the same day, Fastmarkets’ daily steel hot-rolled coil index, fob mill US Midwest was calculated at $51.85 per cwt ($1,037 per short ton), up by $0.66 per cwt or 1.29% from $51.19 per cwt a week earlier on April 2.
Understand current steel price trends and access hundreds of historical steel prices in one place. Find out more about Fastmarkets’ steel prices here.
Canadian market participants largely decried US President Donald Trump’s proclamation on April 2, which alters the way Section 232 tariffs are calculated on derivative products.
According to the new presidential proclamation, derivative articles substantially made of steel, aluminium or copper will pay a flat 25% duty on their full value, a departure from the previous rule of collecting 50% tariffs on only the metals component of a product imported into the US.
“These new tariffs will hurt those Mexican and Canadian fabricators who used American-made steel for their products and then shipped them back to the US,” a Canadian market source said. “These tariffs were supposed to clarify matters, and have instead created more confusion.”
The source added that his company had been paying 50% tariffs for structural steel products imported into the US since June 2025 and absorbing the tariff costs because it did not want to lose its US customer base.
“This is not sustainable,” the first source said.
Notably, the presidential proclamation said that “products made abroad but entirely with American steel, aluminium and copper will be subject to lower tariffs of 10%.”
A second Canadian source — a distributor that supplies equipment manufacturers — sounded alarm bells regarding the implications of the new rules.
“The new Section 232 rules announced increasingly look like a huge blow to Canadian manufacturers,” the second source said.
“Our Canadian customer base is freaking out because most of them export to the US or have customers who export to the US,” the second source said. “If this sticks, it could drive down demand for steel in Canada, which will tend to keep prices here depressed.”
The second source added that the new rules have gone beyond making Section 232 tariffs a “tariff on steel only” to a tariff on the “entire manufacturing value-add.”
“Is Section 232 allowed to do that?” the second source questioned.
“Previously, Canadian manufacturers could work within the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA) rules. Now, even if USMCA applies, the tariff is increased,” the second source said.
This is partly because under the new rules, relief from Section 232 tariffs for Canadian fabricators using US-made steel in their products and then exporting them to the US is removed.
“Under the old rules, Canadian manufacturers could use US-made steel in the equipment — even though US-made steel used for manufacturing is now, since earlier this year, subject to 25% Canadian tariffs when imported into Canada — to avoid the 50% US tariffs,” the second source said.
“If the equipment was then covered under USMCA, the equipment was mostly US tariff-free in most cases. Now, the Section 232 tariffs would apply to the entire value [of the end product] but could be reduced to 10% only if US-made steel is used,” the second source explained.
“Using even just a little non-US steel appears to render the entire good subject to the 10% tariff,” the second source told Fastmarkets.
As a result, it is no longer feasible for Canadian manufacturers to use mainly US-made steel — while paying 25% tariffs to Canada — and then rely on USMCA to ship finished equipment or parts back to the US without Section 232 tariffs applying to the bulk of the steel content or the manufacturing value-add, the second source said.
A third market source expressed similar concerns, highlighting that the new Section 232 rules will penalize labor costs for products made outside the US.
“The tariff on value-add, with labor the majority, is outside the intent of Section 232,” the third source said, adding that “any original equipment manufacturer (OEM) in Canada that produces products destined for the US with steel content higher than 15% will be greatly affected.”
“Our tariffs being paid will increase overall and we are going to increase the tariff recovery rate being charged to US customers,” the third source told Fastmarkets. “This has the highest impact on high-value complex products with significant labor.”
The new Section 232 rules are simply “replacing the repealed emergency-measures tariffs with tariffing the value added into products being shipped into the US with even small quantities of steel,” the third source said. “This essentially continues to circumvent the USMCA agreement with baseless tariffs.”
The new rules will further depress demand from the agricultural equipment end sector, the third source said.
“These 232 tariffs are continually changing scope and calculation, making it impossible for the average consumer to keep up with,” the third source said.
“Consumers just blame manufacturers for what they feel are baseless increases in price and then defer their purchases further,” the third source said. “We feel that between this and the increase in fuel prices, demand will decrease further for agricultural equipment.”
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