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The British government is looking to build a three-way “steel alliance” with the US and the EU in order to protect their industries from a glut of the metal caused by global overproduction, the UK minister for trade has said.
Sir Chris Bryant told the Financial Times that the British government was in “continuous discussions” about the possibility of a 1950s-style tariff pact in which the US, the EU and the UK would agree to forge an alliance to protect against unfairly subsidised steel, much of which comes from China.
“We’re in continuous discussion about how we could make this happen — about whether there should be a three-way [alliance], a two-way, and if so, which two-way,” he said.
Although Bryant said discussions had not reached the stage of a written proposal, he added that a UK-EU-US “steel club” was a natural response to a global challenge that had led to the US imposing 50 per cent tariffs on steel imports, with the EU poised to follow suit.
“The three [of us] have a shared perception that there is overcapacity in the world. We all need to have our own sovereign steel capacity for economic security reasons, for building tanks and all the rest of it,” he said.
Earlier this month Brussels announced proposals to slap a 50 per cent tariff on steel imports from July next year while halving available quotas. The UK industry warned the move left it facing the “biggest crisis” in its history unless steps were taken to defend it.
The EU plan came in response to US President Donald Trump imposing 50 per cent tariffs on steel imports, citing national security requirements — although the UK negotiated a 25 per cent tariff in a bilateral deal agreed last month.
Bryant said the UK was already having “constructive discussions” with Brussels and bilateral talks with key EU members, including Germany, to obtain preferential arrangements for British exporters when the EU’s new regime comes into force in July 2026.
An EU official said Brussels was in talks with trading partners to define quota allocations under its new scheme, with the UK getting a “preferential look”.
Bryant added that he was “pretty confident” the UK, which is preparing to announce new safeguard measures on steel of its own, would end up with a “better deal than the general”, either through larger quotas or exemptions for certain products.
“All of that might in the end be bypassed, of course, if we were able to create some kind of ‘ring of steel’ or a steel alliance. It does feel remarkably like the 1950s, I have to say, Europe talking about a steel deal,” he added.
In the 1951 six European countries — Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Luxembourg — created the European Coal and Steel Community, which eliminated customs duties and taxes on steel traded between them.
A UK-US-EU steel club would in theory impose a common tariff on all imports from outside the group, while enabling steel to be traded between members at zero or highly reduced levies.
The EU and the US announced in 2021 that they were exploring a “global arrangement” on steel and aluminium tariffs during the Biden administration, but the two sides failed to reach an agreement.
The prospect of the EU, US and UK forming a “steel club” at some point in the future was welcomed by Gareth Stace, the director-general of UK Steel, which represents the British steel industry.
“An alliance between like-minded countries would be a breakthrough in resolving the global overcapacity issue and excluding heavily subsidised steel from ravaging what is left of the steel industries in the developed world,” he said.
The German economics ministry said in a statement that it shared a “fundamental interest” with the UK in working to combat global overcapacity in the steel sector, noting that the EU and UK had emphasised the need to tackle the issue jointly in a statement last August. “Further discussions are planned to take place on this issue,” it added.
Global steel overcapacity reached 600mn tonnes last year, equivalent to nearly a quarter of world capacity, according to the OECD. The glut is forecast to increase to 721mn tonnes by 2027, in large part driven by China, which produces 1bn tonnes of steel a year.
The UK is also preparing to publish its own plans for future steel tariffs when its current package of “safeguard measures”— which impose a 25 per cent tariff on 14 steel products that exceed set quotas — expires in June 2026.
Bryant said the UK plans would come “soon” and conceded that there was a “degree of urgency” about how to proceed.
Additional reporting by Laura Pitel in Berlin
