The European Union will take a page out of US President Donald Trump’s tariff playbook on Tuesday with a plan to hike levies and slash quotas for imported steel — to protect the bloc’s struggling industry from cheap Chinese competition.
Urged to act fast to rescue European steel from decline, the EU executive will propose doubling levies on steel imports to 50 percent, and almost halving the volumes allowed in before tariffs apply.
“The European steel industry was on the verge of collapse — we are protecting it so that it can invest, decarbonise, and become competitive again,” said the bloc’s industry chief, Stephane Sejourne.
“We’re not doing Trump-style politics,” he told reporters ahead of presenting the plan at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.
But the EU strategy mirr