Why US tariffs only compound the EU steel industry’s existential woes

Good morning. A scoop to start: Brussels plans a top-to-tail restructuring of the EU’s trillion euro common budget, according to a leaked European Commission document seen by the FT that proposes lumping 50 spending programmes into just three streamlined funds — and more money for shared defence investments.

While you slept, Donald Trump announced tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports. Here, our trade correspondent reports from the pointy end of the US president’s first measures to hit the EU, and we have a dispatch from Warsaw on Poland’s appointment of an Elon Musk-esque official to slash red tape.

Suffering

US tariffs are the last thing the EU’s battered steel industry needs. “We are deindustrialising while we are speaking,” industry boss Axel Eggert tells Andy Bounds.

Context: Donald Trump last night confirmed 25 per cent tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports. The levies will apply from March 4, reviving a paused trade dispute with the EU from his first term.

Eggert, director-general of Eurofer, said the move would pile more pressure on Europe’s shrinking steel sector. Production fell to its lowest level in 2023, slumping by 20 per cent compared with 2018 heights, before Trump imposed steel tariffs for the first time.

Some 3.7mn tonnes of steel sold to the US come from Europe, out of total US steel imports of 18mn tonnes. Owing to the tariffs, not only will some of it be shut out, but cheap metal from China, Indonesia and elsewhere will also try to find a new market outside the US — competing with pricier EU products.

“The most open market is the EU, so we suffer twice,” Eggert said. He estimates that Trump will probably put tariffs on products that use a lot of steel, such as cars, too.

In retaliation to Trump’s 2018 measures, Brussels erected a shield with tariffs of 25 per cent for imports of metal above a certain threshold, but it is increasingly rusty. The so-called safeguard measure has been weakened over time to allow more metal in, and it has to end in June 2026 under WTO rules.

Eggert urged the European Commission to tighten it again before Trump’s new tariffs hit, and then find a way to maintain protection.

Meanwhile, other EU industries fear becoming collateral damage. In 2018 the EU also imposed tit-for-tat sanctions on bourbon whiskey, motorbikes and jeans. That prompted Trump to hit EU spirits in return. EU exports to the US fell by a quarter, a drop of €131mn.

With China recently putting tariffs on brandy, it is a bad time to be a distiller.

“We call on the EU and the US to work together to maintain tariff-free transatlantic spirits trade,” said Spirits Europe boss Ulrich Adam.

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No strings attached

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk seems to have taken some inspiration from US President Donald Trump and selected his very own deregulation tsar, writes Raphael Minder.

Context: Trump has chosen Tesla owner Elon Musk as the head of a new unit tasked with “dismantling government bureaucracy”. This comes as the EU is also looking to cut red tape and simplify rules for businesses to bolster its flagging industrial base.

Tusk announced yesterday that Rafał Brzoska, one of Poland’s most successful entrepreneurs, would lead an advisory team tasked with elaborating deregulation proposals.

Tusk stressed that Warsaw’s goal was to “create conditions that will make it possible for you [corporate leaders] to compete with entrepreneurs from other countries”, rather than dismantling the public sector, as Trump and Musk have set out to do in Washington.

Brzoska, who founded the parcel locker company InPost, has previously criticised Tusk’s government, and the premier has now urged him to put his money where his mouth is.

“You said that deregulation is not difficult, you just have to want it and that you know what needs to be done,” Tusk told the entrepreneur during a press conference, adding a Trumpian flourish: “So get on with it.”

Tusk is also creating a new economic council to tackle complaints from businesses about excessive red tape and the slow pace of reforms since the ruling coalition took office in December 2023.

The premier also said that he would in the coming days welcome the bosses of Google and Microsoft in Warsaw to “finalise their investment plans”.

He had three words to summarise why 2025 would be “a breakthrough year” for Poland: “Investments, investments and once again — investments.”

What to watch today

1. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen meets US vice-president JD Vance in Paris.

2. European Commission presents its 2025 working programme.

3. Informal meeting of EU development ministers in Warsaw.

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