US Steel and Aluminium Tariffs

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Rafferty (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for raising this issue. The steel strategy consultation remains open until 30 March, at which point we will analyse responses received. The consultation is a key step forward in developing the steel strategy, ensuring it best promotes long-term, sustainable growth that will provide benefits to communities across the UK. It will provide us with a clear evidence base on the needs of the steel sector and its customers by leveraging a wide range of views and expertise and will bring those views to the heart of steel-making. We are committed to bringing forward the steel strategy in the spring, and we will learn from the lessons of that strategy.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

My Lords, is it not the case that the reckless and ill-thought-out measures being taken by President Trump will only damage the US economy itself—they will not prevent imports but will harm immensely the steel-using industries that are the main market for the US steel industry? It is an extremely short-sighted measure by President Trump. His having taken that measure is no reason for us to follow in such a short-sighted policy. We have the much more important objective of trying to negotiate better trade terms with the United States. These are general tariffs, not ones against the UK in particular, and the Government are quite right not to react by imposing tariffs ourselves.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I very much thank the noble Lord for that intervention. Let us be clear that industry here does not want to see a trade war with both sides escalating the situation. Standing up for industry means finding a solution, and we are working on that solution. The UK and the US have a strong economic relationship which is fair, balanced and reciprocal. We have £1.2 trillion invested in each other’s economies, supporting more than 2.5 million jobs across both countries. It is important that we maintain and build on those relationships. As I said before, cool heads are aware of and monitoring very carefully what is going on, but we do not want to do anything reciprocal at this stage.