The UK’s Trade Remedies Authority (TRA) has announced that it has expanded the scope of its review of the steel safeguard measure to ensure new evidence submitted by the UK steel industry is fully considered.
The UK-based trade association UK Steel submitted evidence to the TRA that there have been changes in circumstance that may warrant a change to the current tariff rate quotas imposed, claiming that the quotas of certain categories of steel, namely, metallic coated sheet, quarto plates and rebar, are being dominated and exhausted by individual countries. Noting that there has been a decline in global demand for steel, the submission reported that demand in the UK has contracted 16 percent between 2018 and 2023. Against this backdrop, UK Steel claims that the current safeguard measure does not offer adequate protection to UK industry. The TRA has therefore decided to examine this new evidence as part of a review already underway into the developing countries excepted from the safeguard measure.
This review initiated on February 28, 2025, will consider whether the tariff rate quotas to which certain steel products are subject should be varied. The goods subject to review are HRC, metallic coated sheet, organic coated sheet, tin mill products, quarto plates, merchant bars and light sections, rebar, wire rod, angles, shapes, and sections, railway material, gas pipe, hollow section, large welded tube and other welded tube.