Pennsylvania’s two U.S. senators on Monday lauded an agreement between the Biden administration and the European Union to ease a dispute over steel and aluminum tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump in 2018.
The agreement, which heads off retaliatory tariffs by the EU, was announced over the weekend.
Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat, said the agreement with the EU can allow the U.S. to “focus its energies on those countries and competitors who most distort global markets and undermine American workers” — namely China.
“When given a level playing field, American workers, especially our steel workers, can outwork and outcompete our global competitors,” Casey said. “However, for too long they’ve been at a disadvantage due to predatory practices and subsidies from non-market economies.”
Casey said the agreement will protect national security and economic interests, close loopholes that have enabled China to game the global trade system and level the global playing field by taking into account American efforts to reduce the carbon intensity of steel production.
Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican, called the agreement a positive first step” but he said tariff-rate quotas are not an acceptable long-term solution.
“For three long years, American workers, consumers and manufacturers have been bearing the burden of protectionist tariffs — costing over 75,000 manufacturing jobs thus far,” he said. “Continuing to label our allies a ‘national security threat’ through tariff-rate quotas is unwarranted and will only continue to cost Americans jobs and opportunities.”
Toomey also said “using tariffs as negotiating leverage to enact concessions on climate change is inappropriate and outside the scope of the original Section 232 investigation. I encourage the Biden administration to fully remove the Section 232 tariffs on the EU and our other allies and instead work to address the legitimate national security threats facing our country.”
The Republican senator said the episode underscores the need for Congress to take up his legislation to reassert congressional authority over such decisions.
According to the Reuters news agency, U.S. officials did not specify the volume of duty-free steel to be allowed into the United States under a tariff-rate quota system agreed upon with the EU. Reuters reported that sources indicated that annual volumes above 3.3 million tons would be subject to tariffs.
The deal grants an additional two years of duty-free access above the quota for EU steel products that won Commerce Department exclusions in the past year, U.S. officials said.
The agreement requires EU steel and aluminum to be entirely produced in the bloc — a standard known as “melted and poured” — to qualify for duty-free status. The provision is aimed at preventing metals from China and non-EU countries from being minimally processed in Europe before being exported to the U.S.
Reuters reported Europe exported around 5 million tons of steel annually to the U.S. prior to Trump’s imposition of the tariffs on national security grounds.
U.S. steel production, which relies heavily on electric-arc furnaces, is regarded as having far lower carbon emissions than the coal-fueled blast furnaces prevalent in China.
