Comments: The United States confirmed the extension of the EU steel and aluminum tariff quotas until 2025
January 31, 2024
The United States officially confirmed the extension of the tariff quota program for steel and aluminum imports originating in the European Union until the end of 2025, a move that had been expected after the EU recently extended the suspension of tariffs on U.S. goods until March 31, 2025.
According to a statement released by the White House late on Dec. 28, U.S. President Joe Biden determined that certain quantities of eligible steel and aluminum products from the European Union "will no longer threaten to harm national security, and determined that imports of such products from the European Union will be excluded from tariffs within specified quotas."
The tariff quotas affect the 25 percent steel import tariff and 10 percent aluminum import tariff that the United States has imposed since 2018 on most exporters, including the European Union and its member states, under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, which allows tariffs to be imposed for national security purposes. In response to the 2018 tariffs, the EU imposed so-called "rebalancing tariffs" on a variety of American goods, including whiskey and motorcycles.
Since then, the United States has eliminated tariffs or created alternative arrangements such as tariff quotas for trading Allies. In 2021, the Biden administration reached an agreement with the European Union to temporarily replace metal tariffs with tariff quotas until the end of 2023. The EU, in turn, suspended retaliatory tariffs for the same period.
The US tariff quota rules allow annual duty-free imports of 3.3 million tonnes of steel, 18,000 tonnes of unwrought rolled aluminium and 366,040 tonnes of aluminium from the EU. Certain other steel and aluminum products are fully exempt and do not affect the total quota. Specific quantities within the quota are distributed among EU member states and are based on historical imports into the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. imported about 4 million tons of steel products and 283,000 tons of aluminum products from the EU in 2022.
