President Trump expected to ease on metal tariffs as elections draw close

President Donald Trump is getting ready to ease up on some of his steel and aluminum tariffs.

The White House is worried about rising prices and bad poll numbers with midterm elections coming up in November, three people close to the discussions told Financial Times.

The administration will look at what’s getting hit with tariffs and take some items off the list. Trump put duties up to 50% on metal imports last summer, then kept adding more products, washing machines, ovens, even pie tins and food cans.

The numbers tell the story. Over 70% of Americans say the economy is fair or poor right now, per Pew Research Center polling. Furthermore, 52% think his policies made things worse, not better.

Wednesday brought a political gut punch. Six Republicans voted with Democrats to overturn Trump’s Canada tariffs, 219-211. Trump went on social media, warning that Republicans who vote against tariffs would “seriously suffer the consequences come Election time.”

Didn’t work. Representative Don Bacon from Nebraska said the White House tried offering special deals for his state. He told them no. Most of the Republicans who broke ranks come from swing districts where voters and businesses are fed up with tariff costs.

Metal prices tumble as markets price in tariff relief

Aluminum prices dropped 1.9% Friday to $3,040.50 per ton, lowest in a week. Zinc, nickel, and lead all fell too. Traders are betting on easier trade rules ahead.

Mexico, Canada, the UK, and EU countries could catch a break if Trump follows through. But nobody knows the timeline or which products get relief.

The Commerce Department already missed its own 60-day deadline for approving new tariffs from October. Companies had asked for duties on mattresses, cake tins, bicycles. One company actually argued bread products were a “national security” issue because soldiers need them for a healthy diet.

The Supreme Court will decide soon if Trump can legally use emergency powers for these massive tariffs. If they say no, household costs could drop to $400 in 2026 instead of $1,300. Trump posted on Truth Social that this would mean “WE’RE SCREWED” because companies might want their tariff money back.

Americans foot the bill despite Trump’s claims

Trump won’t admit that Americans pay for tariffs, not foreign companies. The Tax Foundation found households got hit with an extra $1,000 last year. This year? That number goes up to $1,300.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York put out research Thursday that backs this up with hard numbers. The average tariff rate on imports jumped to 13% in 2025 from just 2.6% at the start of the year. That’s a massive spike in less than 12 months.

The New York Fed’s analysis looked at who’s actually paying for Trump’s tariffs on goods from Mexico, China, Canada, and the European Union. The answer: 90% of the cost landed on U.S. companies. “US firms and consumers continue to bear the bulk of the economic burden of the high tariffs imposed in 2025,” the report said.

The Kiel Institute looked at over 25 million shipping records. They found Americans absorbed 96% of the tariff price increases. “The claim that foreign countries pay these tariffs is a myth,” said Julian Hinz, one of their researchers.

Cryptopolitan covered Trump’s habit of backing down when tariffs cause problems. Last May, he signaled he’d drop the 145% China duties after they backfired. The UK has been pushing Trump to follow through on a steel deal he promised, still waiting.

This fits a bigger problem. According to a Reuters report, Trump shelved multiple security actions against Chinese tech companies right before his planned April trip to Beijing.

Restrictions on China Telecom, TP-Link routers, and Chinese gear in U.S. data centers, all dropped. The administration let Biden’s limits on advanced chips to China go away. The TikTok deal went through with Chinese owners still involved.

Matt Pottinger, who was deputy national security advisor in Trump’s first term, put it bluntly: “At a moment when we are desperately trying to remove ourselves from Beijing’s leverage over rare-earth supply chains, it is ironic that we’re actually letting Beijing acquire new areas of leverage over the U.S. economy.”

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