Bernd Janzen Interviewed for Marketplace on Titanium Sponge Section 232 Investigation

Bernd Janzen, an international trade partner at Akin Gump, spoke with American Public Media’s Marketplace for a segment looking at the Section 232 investigation into titanium sponge imports.

Unlike most Section 232 investigations, the segment reports, this particular one comes at the request of a specific company, rather than the Commerce Department. Timet, the only company in the United States that makes titanium sponge, argues it is being harmed by overseas titanium sponge suppliers who it considers a threat to U.S. national security.

If Commerce agrees, it could impose tariffs, but Janzen said there could be some objections. The United States gets most of its titanium from Japan, which is, he pointed out, “one of the closest military allies of the United States.”

Timet’s argument, meanwhile, is different than that used by the Trump administration to justify earlier tariffs on imported steel and aluminum when it was declared that the United States needed healthy steel and aluminum sectors to have a strong economy, and that this was in the national security interests of the United States. Janzen described that as a controversial reading of the law: “What we’re seeing now really is a stretching of the statutory concept of national security to include economic security.”