The moves echo a French proposal backed in July by Europe’s steel lobby EUROFER and 11 EU nations, including Spain and Italy. That plan proposed slashing the bloc’s current steel safeguard quotas by 40 percent to 50 percent. Imports exceeding the quotas would catch a 50 percent tariff.
“As a non-EU country, we will worry about this more than the U.S. tariffs,” said a British steel exporter, granted anonymity to speak candidly about commercially sensitive matters. The EU measures “would affect us directly and in terms of trade diversions,” they said, pointing to the further impact of exports diverted to the U.K. by Brussels’ new protections.
“We are deeply concerned by reports that the European Commission is considering significant reductions to steel safeguard quotas,” said Lisa Coulson, chief commercial officer of British Steel. “Such measures would risk shutting British producers out of our largest export market at a time when the sector is already contending with 25 percent tariffs in the United States.”
‘Panic stations’
Some 1.9 million of the 4 million tons of steel Britain manufactures annually goes to the EU. The U.S., by comparison, imports just 200,000 tons of British steel.
“In the case of steel, what the EU is going to do is very, very important,” said Carmen Suarez, co-CEO of the Trade Remedies Authority, Britain’s trade watchdog, adding the proposal will be “watched by many with lots of interest” in Britain’s steel industry and Department for Business and Trade.
The EU’s proposals threaten to have a devastating impact on Britain’s steel industry. Alongside Trump’s tariffs, the sector has been rocked by bankruptcies and the failure of British Steel this year, requiring the government to seize emergency control of its operations.