EU announces final safeguard measures for 26 categories of imported steel products

The EU upgraded its trade relief measures on February 1, announcing the implementation of final safeguards for 26 categories of imported steel products.

According to the announcement issued by the European Commission on the same day, the final safeguards will be implemented in the form of tariff quotas on February 2. The EU will impose a 25% safeguard tariff once the "top" imports exceed the quota.

Safeguards are one of WTO trade remedies, which are divided into temporary safeguards and final safeguards. They are intended to avoid a sharp increase in the number of imports of a product and seriously damage or endanger the relevant industries of the importing country.
After the US imposed a 25% tariff on imported steel products on March 23 last year, the European Union launched a safeguards investigation on imported steel products on March 26, and on July 19 last year, the European Union began to implement temporary safeguards on 23 types of imported steel products.

As for the substitution of final safeguard measures for temporary safeguard measures, the announcement on February 1 quoted the EU survey results as saying that due to the restrictions imposed by the United States on its steel market, steel products were flowing into the EU market, resulting in a surge in imports of EU steel products, "seriously endangering EU steel manufacturers".

According to the announcement, the final safeguard measures implemented on February 2 will last for three years, during which review can be conducted according to changes in the situation.
So far, in addition to safeguards, the EU has adopted two other measures to deal with the imposition of steel products tariffs on the United States. One is to impose retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports to Europe, and the other is to resort to the WTO dispute settlement mechanism.