Brussels will make the business safeguards to metal by Trump tariffs and Chinese overproduction | Economy | EUROtoday

In a world in withdrawal and in full turbulence for the business warfare with the US, after the tariffs on the metal -decreed by Donald Trump, Brussels prepares new safety measures for European metal and aluminum. The European Commission will extend the present safeguard measures for metal that reaches the EU and proposes to impose new everlasting formulation of safety to the European market, because of the impact on the group membership of the overproduction of China and the affect of taxes of 25% to the sector that Washington launched final week. Tariffs earlier than which the EU has promised retaliation to US merchandise value as much as 26,000 million euros. Brussels will announce these new safeguards within the third quarter of the yr, as detailed in a brand new plan for the steel sector, to which the nation has had entry, which the group govt will current on Wednesday.

Already in 2018, with the First Commercial War with the United States throughout Trump’s first mandate, Brussels (which has the competitors on business problems with the EU) imposed safeguards the sector to the metal -shaped within the type of quotas for merchandise that attain the European market and, as soon as that quota, tariffs. This business safety measure expires in June 2026. The group govt believes that it have to be expanded and make it extra everlasting.

“It is not reasonable to assume that the excess world structural capacity and its negative impact on trade for EU steel industry, which activated the use of safeguarding, will disappear on July 1, 2026,” says the draft of the plan. ” markets, which makes the EU market the main receiver of excess world capacity, ”he says.

In addition, Brussels, which speaks of “exceptional situation” to argue the need to introduce an “adequate and effective border protection level” to preserve a steel industry of the competitive and sustainable EU, will launch new research on the aluminum market to determine the impact also there of Trump’s tariffs. In December, another investigation began on the steel sector. The community executive, led by the conservative Úrsula von der Leyen, remarks now that it will not hesitate to activate additional protection measures if they are considered necessary as a result of this new investigation.

Imports of alloys to the EU have increased considerably in recent years and the industry has been forced to paralyze much of its capacity, says the commission in the draft that this newspaper has consulted. The situation is also deteriorating in the aluminum sector, continues. “The EU producers misplaced a substantial market share over the last decade and, as well as, round 50 % of the first manufacturing capability stays restricted since 2021,” the document points out, which will study the Colegio de Commissioners on Wednesday.

Brussels ensures that production has not been recovered since the Covid-19 pandemic-in 2023, the manufacture of steel was the lowest since there is a record, without counting on the years of the health crisis-and that the situation has been aggravated by the high prices of energy and the low demand. In addition, he also believes that American tariffs on aluminum can make the situation even more worse, with a “important menace” of commercial diversion from multiple destinations. That is, before the closure of other markets, producers from different places derive their products to the community club, a market from 27 countries and 450 million citizens. Thus, the EU, one of the most open blocks from the commercial point of view, could become the main receiver of excess global capacity, he says.

Election of the safeguards

“The fee has noticed a rising pattern that export producers attempt to keep away from business protection measures. This habits may undermine the effectiveness of our measures,” says the draft of the plan. In fact, to stop that, through third countries, states such as China avoid the safeguards, Brussels has designed a new protocol to draw the products that arrive. It is about preventing real production from being done in a country subject to tariffs but labeling another that is not, in which part of its production is completed.

Thus, it will introduce what has called a “merger and discharge rule”, according to which the origin of the product is no longer determined by traditional norms of origin, but by a specific regulation according to which the metal is considered originally from the country where it was originally merged, regardless of the place of subsequent transformation. “The software of this monitoring normal will remove the potential of altering the origin of the metallic product by means of a minimal transformation and can present higher certainty within the traceability of the origin of the product,” says the group govt.