On Monday, EU leaders were scheduled to meet for the Foreign Affairs Council on trade to discuss US tariffs, its effects on the EU economy and a possible response.
A range of newly introduced tariffs in the US were targeting a substantial portion of the EU’s exports to the country worth €380 billion ($415 billion) per year.
“Some 70% of our total exports… are facing tariffs of 20% or 25%, or even higher when combined with existing Most Favoured Nation tariffs, such as the 27.5% duty on passenger cars,” EU trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic said during a Foreign Affairs Council (Trade) press conference on April 7.
Even though the EU remains open to negotiations and considers the issue a priority, the bloc is also ready to respond with countermeasures.
“While the EU remains open to – and would strongly prefer – negotiation, we will not wait endlessly,” Sefcovic said.
Concerning steel and aluminium in particular, the European Commission “received valuable feedback from… Member States and 660 stakeholders,” and is working on a list of counter-measures. This list of measures, and the levels of proposed tariffs, were to be sent to member states on April 7, while a vote on them was set for April 9, with the final list to be adopted on April 15.
Any duties imposed on products will start on that day for the first set of measures, and on May 15 for the remainder, according to a European Commission press release.
No details on exact counter measures have yet revealed.
Regional sources suggested that rebalancing measures would include a mirror 25% tariff on steel and aluminium imports from the US, as was suggested in March.
Trade background
On April 2, the US White House announced the country’s so-called “liberation” tariffs affecting every US trade partner, including the EU.
As a result, all EU-origin imports to the US were now faced with 20% blanket tariffs, affecting an already-struggling European manufacturing sector.
While no additional tariffs on steel were added at that time, the US had on March 12 imposed tariffs as high as 25% on imports of steel, aluminium, and certain products containing steel and aluminium, from the EU and other trading partners.
Exports to the US accounted for 16%, 2.5 million tonnes of the total of 15.8 million tonnes, of carbon steel exports from the EU in 2024.
Steel market stakeholders underlined the urgent need for the EU to propose new trade defense measures for steel, which would go beyond the existing safeguards, in order to address the potential deflection of exports from other major steel-producing countries into the EU market.
Europe’s steel sector remained the backbone of many regional economies, with approximately 500 production sites across 22 EU member states, the Commission said. According to EU data, the European steel sector contributes around €80 billion to the EU’s gross domestic product (GDP) and supports more than 2.5 million jobs.
But declines in production volumes over recent years were also clear to see in the data. Steel production in the EU-27 was 129.50 million tonnes in 2024, according to the World Steel Association. Although this total was up by 2.6% from 2023, it was still down by 15.1% from the 152.50 million tonnes made in 2021.
“Capacity utilization rates are dramatically low across the EU,” a mill source in Europe said. “On average, it’s not higher than 70%, while imports’ share in consumption has been steadily moving up in recent years.”
