The UK’s Trade Remedies Authority (TRA) has announced its final recommendation to the UK government that the safeguard measures on some steel products should be terminated on June 30 amid insufficient UK production, no increased imports or no serious injury, and not meeting the country’s economic interest, while the measures on certain other steel products should be extended for three years. The UK Secretary of State for International Trade will now decide whether to accept the recommendation. Without a decision being made to extend measures, the current steel safeguards will expire on June 30, 2021.
The steel product categories the TRA recommended for revocation are: metallic coated sheet, tin products, non-alloyed merchant bars and light sections, stainless bars and light sections, non-alloy and other alloy wire rod, angles, shapes and sections, rails, non-alloy and other cold finished bars, non-alloy and other alloy quarto plates, non-alloy wire and stainless wire rod. In May, The Trade Remedies Investigations Directorate had recommended that the safeguard measures on large welded tubes should be terminated, as SteelOrbis previously reported. However, according to the final recommendation of the TRA, the safeguard measures on stainless wire rod are to be terminated in the place of those on large welded tubes.
The trade association UK Steel stated that the UK government must decide to extend all the steel safeguard measures for another three years and that anything else would be damaging to the UK steel sector, as SteelOrbis previously reported.