US steel tariffs on British Steel scrapped
US exports account for 9 per cent of UK steel exports by value
US tariffs on UK steel and aluminium have been scrapped.
The UK-US trade deal has seen a host of tariffs introduced by President Trump’s administration in recent months either reduced or scrapped. On March 12, the USA imposed 25 per cent tariffs, or taxes, on all steel and aluminium imports. The UK and British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant were not exempt.
The new deal now sees these particular tariffs entirely scrapped for the UK, in a significant potential boost for the British steel industry. The US is the UK’s second most important export market for its steel, behind only the EU.
US exports account for 9 per cent of UK steel exports by value and 7 per cent by volume. A British Steel spokesperson had stated at the time of the imposition of the new 25 per cent tariff in March that the US was an important market for the company, including sections and special profiles.
UK Steel, the trade association of the country’s steel industry, also warned the tariff would have “hugely damaging consequences” for the industry. But now the tariff has been removed on the 80th anniversary of VE Day.
It comes just after British Steel announced plans to recruit 180 more staff, and only a couple of weeks after it cancelled consultation talks on the potential redundancies of up to 2,700 workers.
The company remains owned by Jingye Group but directly controlled by the British Government, after a law was hurriedly passed last month to ensure Scunthorpe’s blast furnaces kept running.
The wider deal also includes a reduction in tariffs on the UK cars imported into the US, but does not remove an overall 10 per cent ‘baseline tariff’ on UK goods imported into the US that President Trump brought in on April 10.