Tinplate is the humble steel behind America’s pantry. Thin and tin-coated, it forms the food cans that carry American harvests from the farm to the kitchen shelf.
More than a century ago, President McKinley’s tariff policy took American tinplate from a fledgling industry to a world leader. Today, that industry has withered. U.S. tinplate lines fell from 12 in 2018 to just three, and American can makers now import about 80 percent of the tinplate they use, all of it subject to the 50 percent Section 232 steel tariff.
The result is a tariff loophole that works against American producers. Domestic manufacturers and food processors pay higher costs for the steel they need, while a can of corn made and filled in China enters the country without paying any Section 232 tariff on its steel. Tinplate duties reached nearly $500 million from July 2025 to February 2026, up from about $75 million a year earlier. Canned fruit and vegetable prices have risen 48.8 percent since 2018, compared with 28.2 percent for frozen, and about 6 billion foreign-filled cans entered the U.S. in 2025, up 32 percent since 2018.
The fix is straightforward. Commerce and USTR should add a targeted list of foreign-filled food cans to the Section 232 derivatives list, matching the tariff on the can to the tariff on its steel. Paired with incentives for firms that expand domestic tinplate capacity and near-term relief on imported tinplate, this would level the playing field for the 20,000 Americans who make metal cans, the processors who fill them, and the farmers who supply them.
American industry should never pay more simply for making cans in America. It’s time to close the tinplate loophole.
