According to foreign media Power Transformer News, the U.S. Department of Commerce recently announced that it will initiate a national security investigation on imported electrical steel and related products in accordance with the "232 clause", which has raised industry concerns about the possible results of the investigation.

Ron Harper, president of Canadian electrical steel maker Cogent Power Inc, said the trade survey may have a negative impact on US power generation companies. Cogent Power Inc supplies electrical steel products to original equipment manufacturers for power distribution, power generation and special transformers in the United States.

"This has the potential to increase the cost of US transformer manufacturers and power generation companies. Considering that there is currently only AK Steel in the US as an oriented electrical steel manufacturer, and there are few transformer core component manufacturers, once the survey results support the import of electrical steel and related Additional tariffs on components will have a significant cost impact on the relevant downstream industries in the United States," Ron Harper added.