The UK Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has rejected the UK’s Trade Remedies Authority’s (TRA) recommendation regarding a tariff-rate quota and has decided to implement a different measure, according to a letter by Jonathan Reynolds, the UK secretary of state for DBT and president of the Board of Trade, to Nick Baird, chairman of the TRA. According to the letter, the reason for the decision is to ensure the overall effectiveness of the UK’s steel safeguard measure for domestic producers while balancing the need for security of supply for the UK market in line with traditional trade flows.
The DBT has decided to increase the overall volume of each category’s tariff-rate quota by 0.1 percent, while applying a 15 percent cap in the residual quota of metallic coated sheet and a 20 percent cap in the residual quotas of non-alloy and other alloy quarto plates and rebar to ensure that UK imports from exporting countries are more closely aligned with traditional trade flows, both effective from July 1, 2025. Initially, the TRA had recommended that 40 percent country-specific caps be imposed on imports of the three categories of steel in question, as SteelOrbis previously reported.
In addition, there have been some amendments to the allocation of the tariff-rate quotas in line with the TRA’s recommendation, including preventing any unused quarterly quotas from being made available in the following quarter; preventing WTO members with a country-specific quota from being able to access the residual quota in the final quarter; updating developing country exemptions based on UK import data for the period January 1, 2024 to December 31, 2024 and in line with the WTO Agreement on Safeguards.
Gareth Stace, director general of UK-based trade association UK Steel, said, “The measures will reduce the pressure of steel diversion from the US and EU and prevent countries that flood international markets with unsustainably cheap steel from swamping the UK. The government has made the right decision, in response to a tough trading environment where subsidized imports undermine domestic steel production.”