The UK’s steel safeguard quotas should be halved to protect the domestic industry from becoming a “dumping ground” for global overcapacity, warns Russell Codling, commercial director at Tata Steel UK.
The comments were made during a Business and Trade Committee hearing this week, monitored by Kallanish.
“We need half the quotas that are in position as they stand at the moment. [The UK] need to take similar levels of sweeping action in the way in which the EU and the US is choosing to take. Otherwise, we’re just left exposed as the dumping ground of the world for the excess amount of steel,” he said.
He highlighted China’s record level of exports in 2025, reported at 119 million tonnes for finished steel.
Codling highlighted how the US administration has “taken action” against imports with its 50% tariff on all countries, other than the UK, a move he said he understood. “The US recognises the steel industry to be a critical strategic industry for the country, and they’ve decided they need to take protections against imports and the oversupply globally,” he added.
He highlighted other countries are now also taking measures, including Canada, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa. The EU has meanwhile proposed to reduce its import quota volumes and apply a 50% out-of-quota tariff rate from 1 July.
“The safeguard position expires at the end of June this year, exposing the UK steel industry to the full force of that global oversupply around the world,” Codling noted. He added that the safeguards as “ineffective in their own right” and were designed “around a period when the steel markets were substantively larger than they are today”.
“The UK government has two months in which to save the UK steel industry, because this is a death toll for the industry at large and all of its supply chains,” Codling warned.
He said the UK is “still processing” while others have acted, which risks “over-analysing, over-assessing, and ending up with something that either doesn’t deliver against the goal of protecting … the last bite of that industry, because there’s not a steel company in the UK that’s really making any form of a profit. They’re all just about teetering on the edge and just about being able to maintain their position. That isn’t going to last much longer.”
Without the reduced safeguard quota volumes, there will be no domestic industry left to meet UK steel demand. “Otherwise, we will have to be looking at how we respond in our own cost base, which will impact on communities, our downstream assets across the country,” he warned.
Tata Steel said last week its UK losses will continue until the government revises its safeguards or steel prices increase.
