An analyst on Tuesday said while United States president Donald Trump's steel and aluminium tariffs are expected to have a limited direct impact on China, countries such as the US' neighbours of Canada and Mexico will feel the pinch.

The comment came after Trump on Monday announced a 25-percent import tax on all steel and aluminium entering the US "with no exception". The measures take effect on March 4.

Vivian Yang, senior analyst at Chinese steel data provider, MySteel, told RTHK that the move will have limited impact on China's steel sector, as Beijing has already shifted away from the US market.

She said the volume of China's steel and aluminium exports are much lower when compared to 2018 when Trump announced an earlier round of steel tariffs. Only some 891,000 tonnes of steel were exported to the US from China last year, accounting for 0.8 percent of the nation's total steel exports in 2024, according to MySteel.

Yang said nations including Canada, Mexico and Brazil will be hit the hardest as they are currently the US’ top suppliers of the two metals.

"Canada may face greater economic recursion as the tariffs could lead to increased production costs and potential job losses in the Canadian steel and aluminium sectors," she said.

However, the Shanghai-based analyst warned that the new tariffs will still have an impact on China's "indirect" steel exports, such as automobiles, ships, and machinery.

"The White House had already imposed a 10 percent additional on all Chinese goods imports. And if Trump's targeted tariffs of up to 60 percent on all Chinese imports he claimed earlier is to be realised, the impact on Chinese manufactured goods would be huge, because almost all Chinese exported products would lose their price advantage and have no export profit," she said.

"Although China is exporting very little steel to the US directly nowadays, some Chinese steel products do make their way into the US by other channels, for example, some are purchased by foreign countries and re-shipped to the US, [so] these transshipment practices will be impacted," she added.

Mainland steel-related shares declined following the latest tariff announcements, with iron and steel manufacturing conglomerates Hesteel Group and Angang Steel's stocks falling over two percent.