Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, if he will make a comparative assessment of the effect of tariffs on steel imports in the EU and the US.

Each anti-dumping case is different. Moreover the levels of dumping and injury occurring in EU and US markets may be very different. The Government examines the evidence in all EU anti-dumping cases closely before taking a view.

The Government believes that effective trade defence measures should be proportionate, not protectionist, and strike a balance between removing the injury to producers caused by dumping, and avoiding imposing unnecessary costs on user industries, retailers, consumers and the rest of the economy. The evidence we have to date is that duties that have been imposed on imports of Chinese steel into the EU have been effective in delivering rapid, substantial and sustained reductions in imports. For example, imports of wire rod, organic coated steel and stainless steel flat products are down by more than 90%.

Where the European Commission has set duties that we believe to be too low to remove the injury caused to EU industry by dumped imports, we will push for them to be increased, as we have done in the reinforcing bar and cold rolled flat products cases.