The actions reflect a French initiative supported in July by Europe’s steel lobby EUROFER and 11 EU countries, including Spain and Italy. This plan suggested reducing the EU’s current steel safeguard quotas by 40 to 50 percent, with imports exceeding these quotas facing a 50 percent tariff.
“As a non-EU nation, we will worry about this more than the U.S. tariffs,” said a British steel exporter, who spoke on condition of anonymity about commercially sensitive issues. The EU measures “would affect us directly and in terms of trade diversions,” they mentioned, highlighting the additional impact of exports redirected 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 dealing with 25 percent tariffs in the United States.”
‘Panic stations’
Approximately 1.9 million of the 4 million tons of steel that Britain produces each year is exported to the EU. In contrast, the U.S. imports only 200,000 tons of British steel.
“In the case of steel, what the EU is going to do is very, very important,” stated Carmen Suarez, co-CEO of the Trade Remedies Authority, Britain’s trade watchdog, noting that 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 pose a severe threat to Britain’s steel industry. In addition to Trump’s tariffs, the sector has been affected by bankruptcies and the collapse of British Steel this year, leading to the government taking emergency control of its operations.
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