Orgalime comments following the US decision to impose tariffs on foreign steel and aluminium

As strong supporters of the multilateral trade system under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules and supporters of free trade overall, our industries are very concerned about the recent US decision to impose tariffs on foreign steel and aluminium.

Orgalime supports a constructive and well-balanced use of trade defence instruments. We caution against the hasty use of EU rebalancing measures, which could have potentially counter-productive effects on the global supply chains of the European engineering industry. We therefore ask the European Commission to first carefully investigate whether diversionary effects of goods flows to Europe could actually arise. If so, only targeted and WTO-compliant safeguards should be considered, taking into account the interests of both steel producers and users. In our view, hasty EU rebalancing measures would go against the principle of de-escalation of tensions and would only support the advocates of protectionism.

Download the position paper to read our views in full.