News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Friday, April 25, 2025
The European Commission is preparing to extend a steel import safeguard it introduced in 2018 to allay fears that metal destined to the United States would be diverted to Europe in the aftermath of president Trump’s Section 232 steel tariffs. The safeguard, initially introduced for a duration of three years …
The EU is preparing to extend its side of the bargain in a tariff truce agreed with Washington in October 2021 to leave room for negotiating a long-term settlement over steel and aluminium duties initially enacted by the Trump administration on national security grounds in 2018.
The European Commission will not stop applying its import safeguard on steel just this year, despite having investigated the matter. Instead, the overall volume that is allowed into the EU market under the steel safeguard will increase by 4% next month – and a slew of country-specific quotas for developing …
Panellists in the dispute settlement cases brought by China, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey in an almost coordinated fashion after 2018 could no longer delay the publication of perhaps the politically most salient case in the World Trade Organization’s twenty-seven year history: the United States Section 232 steel and aluminium tariffs. …
It’s still very quiet in Brussels but trade policy has started stirring ahead of a packed rentrée next week.
AUGUST RECESS AT BORDERLEX: As of Monday 1 August, the small team at Borderlex will be on a break from trade news reporting as the policy machineries in Brussels, London and Geneva themselves grind to a halt for the summer. We will be back during the week of 22 August. …
Part Two of the recent Turkey-EU trade dispute settlement saga around pharmaceuticals and steel is ending today with a panel report that goes easy on Brussels in its handling of its 2018 steel safeguard measure. Even if the panel did not give the EU a clean slate in the way …
Borderlex will be in recess as of tomorrow (22 December) for about a fortnight due to the festive season. So we are fast-forwarding our usual Friday Week in Brussels column for you…
EU US steel and aluminium talks reach crunch time The EU and US are still negotiating on a mechanism aimed at phasing out Trump era national security import duties on steel (25%) and aluminium (10%).
If anything, this week in trade in Brussels was about preparing the ground for what comes next in the autumn 2021.
