EU has recently imposed quotas on steel imports as provisional safeguard measures to protect the bloc’s domestic steel industry. The EU would organise meetings in Sep’18 to receive opinions from stakeholders, and Thailand’s Foreign Trade Department would be there to seek further exemption.
After this exemption, Thailand has warned the country’ steel exporters to control the volume of cold-rolled stainless steel sheets and strips, and non-alloyed wires as export of these products to the EU was relatively high.
EU has exempted Thailand on a condition that if Thai steel products exceeded 3% of the EU`s total imports of these products, Thailand could face EU safeguard tariffs.
The steep tariffs on steel and aluminium imports announced by the U.S. government in the month of Mar’18 have irked many economies. Following U.S., other countries like China, EU, and Canada has also tightened their belts and has announced various protectionism measures citing the reason to safeguard their domestic steel industry.
EU’s quotas for 23 steel product categories have been set at the average of imports over the past three years, with a 25% tariff set for volumes exceeding those amounts. The main exporters of steel to the EU are China, India, Russia, South Korea, Turkey and Ukraine.
According to the market reports, EU’s imports of 28 steel products increased by 62% from 2013 to 2017, most noticeably in 2016 and rose further in the current year. However, for five products, imports did not increase, making European Commission to exclude them from its measures.
For 12 steel product categories, imports from countries including China, Russia and Ukraine are already subject to anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties. Thus the Commission has hinted to either suspend or reduce them to avoid the imposition of “double duties”.