From the BBC:
EU leaders have a "gun held to their head" over the threat of US tariffs on steel imports, the head of trade body UK Steel has warned. Gareth Stace said the EU needed to impose safeguards to curb Chinese steel once destined for the US that will now be heading to Europe...
Mr Stace said US tariffs would be "purely protectionist... The Trump administration says protecting America's steel and aluminum producers is a matter of national security. What President Trump is proposing to do here is not free trade and it's against WTO rules," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"Since he announced that he was going to impose these blanket, arbitrary tariffs on steel imports almost three months ago we have hoped for the best but we've feared for the worst - and that's what we might see at midnight tonight, US time."
Mr Stace admitted that there was a problem of global over-capacity in the steel industry, but said most of that was in China. About 20 million tonnes of Chinese steel would need to "find a new home to go to and, because we are a free and open market here in the UK/the EU, it'll come here, we believe, and therefore further damage our sector - not only from the direct impact of tariffs in the US but the surge of steel coming here", he said.
Does the man not listen to himself? He appears to be arguing against and for tariffs at the same time. As to over-capacity, who's to say that the over-capacity is 'in China'?? The Chinese would have a better argument that it is the higher cost producers in Europe who are the over-capacity.
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It appears to be agreed across the board* that Trump's tariffs are A Bad Thing, which they are IMHO. Can these people now apply the same logic to the 20% tariff which the UK government imposes on most ostensibly free-market transactions, even where both supplier and customer are within the UK?
* I do have the impression that if a left-wing government of a developing country were to impose such tariffs, a lot of the same people would fully support them.
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