Tata Steel, the largest steel manufacturer of the United Kingdom, looks up a potential exclusion of the new trade agreement between the Prime Minister Keir Starrer with the United States and arranges urgent discussions between the ministers and the American colleagues.
The company, which operates the huge Port Talbot location in South Wales, fears that there could be strict US original rules that could be threatened with its annual export business of $ 100 million to America.
On Wednesday, Starrer confirmed that the agreement – last month with US President Donald Trump was mediated to raise the tariffs on British steel and aluminum – “in just a few weeks”. The deal makes the introduction of new 50% tariffs for British metals and keeps the current sentence until at least July 9th. However, the most important details on implementation, including the quota sizes and qualified conditions, still have to be completed.
At the center of the problem is the “melted and cast” rule that rules US steel imports, which stipulates that steel has to be made entirely in the country of origin in order to qualify for tariff exceptions. Tata Steel imported steel in the middle of the transition to the green production with electrical lights from his sister companies in India and Europe to meet orders – a practice that could violate the US requirements.
Times has reported that the negotiators in Great Britain are urging a carve-out that would enable Tatas steel to qualify according to the new trade conditions. A high -ranking source of the government informed the paper that it was “confident” that a solution could be found, but recognized that “negotiations are complex”.
Tata Steel closed its traditional blast furnaces in Port Talbot last year as part of its 1.25 -billion -pfund plan for decarbonizing production. Although this step corresponds to the environmentally friendly industrial strategy of Great Britain, but has introduced complications for exports to markets such as the USA that enforced rigid definitions of origin.
The United States has also expressed concerns about British Steel, which is currently owned by the Chinese Jingye Group owned by Chinese. According to reports, American officials fear that Chinese state-bound property could create a “back door” for Chinese steel in order to enter the US market under a British flag. In response to this, the British government called emergency powers in April to temporarily take control of British Steel’s scunhorpe work, citing national security concerns.
The urgency that deals with the agreement has increased in the global escalation of the trade protection. At the beginning of this week, the United States officially increased steel and aluminum tariffs to 50%for most international partners, which exerts considerable pressure on British exporters.
Industry leaders have asked both governments to quickly pursue the trade agreement. Russell Codling, director at Tata Steel, told the MPs that persistent delays in the transatlantic business would have disturbed around £ 150 million. “If we can get this deal as soon as possible, it will receive stability for us and our customers in the USA,” he said.
While the British government frames the economic prosperity of US AK as a flagship after the Brexit profit, the uncertainty about the justification of Tata underlines the complex realities of global trading policy in particular when it overlaps with industrial strategy, environmental goals and national security sensitivity.