When President Trump announced a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian steel and aluminium imports, Doug Ford, the feisty premier of Ontario, Canada’s largest industrial province, came out swinging.
He not only promised a retaliatory 25 per cent tariff on Ontario’s electricity exports to its southern neighbour but threatened to cut off supplies to New York, Michigan and Minnesota altogether.
This bellicose response earned Ford an urgent meeting at the White House and he came away with an agreement that Trump would withdraw his threat to double the US tariff on Canadian metal to 50 per cent.
Even Brussels, the sclerotic capital of the EU, came out all guns blazing when the global tariff kicked in yesterday. European Commission President Ursula van der Leyden accused the US of disrupting supply chains, risking jobs and pushing up prices and announced that the bloc would impose retaliatory tariffs on US exports worth up to £22billion.
In contrast, our prime minister would only admit to being ‘disappointed’ and said that he would take a ‘pragmatic approach’ to the White House’s action.
Keir Starmer’s feeble response in the face of such an aggressive threat to Britain’s struggling steel industry was greeted with derision by our steelmakers, trade unions and opposition parties.
His reaction is all the more shameful because it comes at a particularly bad time for the industry.
Last year Britain sold some 180,000 tons of steel worth £370million to the US, our second biggest market after the EU.
Donald Trump has pushed ahead with the 25 per cent levy on steel and aluminium imports despite desperate pleas for an exemption
Keir Starmer is resisting pressure to retaliate after failing in his bid to persuade Mr Trump to spare Britain (pictured together at the White House last month)
Trump is using tariffs as a political weapon that is designed to return manufacturing and jobs to America’s declining ‘rust belt’, a core constituency for the President.
Starmer, on the other hand, appears to be sitting on his hands in the face of a lethal threat to an industry that supports thousands of jobs across Britain, mainly in Wales, Humberside, and Yorkshire.
There is some method in No 10’s madness. Having left the EU, Starmer clearly feels he has a good chance of forging a wide-ranging free trade deal with the US that could encompass everything from technology to, yes, steel. He is counting on the idea that a conciliatory approach now will pay off later.
But the tariffs could not come at a worse time for Britain’s once booming steel industry as production in South Wales and other areas is already under threat from Whitehall’s onerous climate change agenda.
Plans are afoot, with the government’s financial support, to replace the production of virgin steel, made in coal-fired blast furnaces from iron ore, with steel made from scrap metal in ‘electric arc’ furnaces. A major reduction in exports to the US could put the viability of such plans at risk.
Our steel industry’s domestic revenues could also be hit, as highly subsidised producers in China, who find themselves priced out of the US market by tariffs, flood our market with cheap steel.
Trump is using tariffs as a political weapon that is designed to return manufacturing and jobs to America’s declining ‘rust belt’, a core constituency for the President, writes Alex Brummer (stock image)
Engineers at the manufacturers’ organisation, Make UK, have warned that, with the industry already faced with global overcapacity and high energy costs, this latest blow to its export prospects ‘is all the more detrimental’ and the government should take early steps to safeguard its future.
Meanwhile, the GMB, which represents many of the 33,700 workers directly employed in steel production, has described the tariffs are ‘potentially disastrous for all sides’
Britain appears to be counting on the good faith of Trump’s tariffs tsar, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, to bring an end to the crisis.
But doing nothing at a moment in history when self-sufficiency in steel for rebuilding our defences and developing nuclear power has never been more vital, looks like an act of self-harm.
It is no exaggeration to say that our national security depends on a vibrant, competitive domestic steel industry.
