The UK is facing a 25 percent tariff for exports of angles and sections (Category 17) to Northern Ireland, which is continuing to follow EU custom rules following Brexit, as the tonnages allocated for the new quota period which started on July 1 and will end on September 30 have been exhausted.
With the EU’s new quota adjustments made in June amid the war between Russia and Ukraine, banning steel imports from Russia to the EU, the UK was included in the other countries quota of 64,947 mt for the abovementioned product, while it had its own country specific tariff-rate quota of 25,909 mt for the same period before the adjustments.
Meanwhile, unlike the UK, the EU has country-specific tariff-rate quota of 82,978 mt of angles and sections for the exports to the UK. “To add insult to injury EU steel producers can continue to export these goods tariff free throughout the UK, but we can no longer do so in the opposite direction,” Gareth Stace, director general of the UK Steel trade association, commented.
Prior to the EU’s quota adjustments, Ukraine, Turkey and South Korea also had country-specific tariff-rate quotas of 29,823 mt, 21,562 mt and 5,023 mt for the Category 17, respectively. Other countries’ quota for the given product was at 11,826 mt.