Turkish steel targeted for EU tariffs to help ArcelorMittal

The European Union threatened to impose tariffs on steel from Turkey in the latest sign of concerns by EU-based producers such as ArcelorMittal and Thyssenkrupp AG about low-cost imports.

The European Commission opened a probe into whether Turkish exporters of hot-rolled coil sold it in the EU below cost, a practice known as dumping.

The EU market for this kind of steel, a bread-and-butter product used in everything from cars to construction, was worth around $17 billion last year. The bloc’s supply of hot-rolled coil in 2019 was roughly 31 million metric tons, of which Turkey accounted for about 2.8 million tons.

The investigation will determine whether hot-rolled coil from Turkey is “being dumped and whether the dumped imports have caused injury to the union industry,” the commission, the 27-nation EU’s executive arm in Brussels, said on Thursday in the Official Journal.

The EU steel industry has seen a bleak outlook in 2019 get worse with the coronavirus outbreak this year. Even before the pandemic-induced economic slump, the European industry warned about a weakening EU market as a result of global overcapacity, U.S.-instigated tariff wars and the risk of a disorderly U.K. divorce from the bloc.

Since 2017, the EU has had five-year anti-dumping duties in place on hot-rolled coil from China, Russia, Ukraine, Brazil and Iran.

The dumping inquiry covering Turkey is based on a March 31 complaint by the European Steel Association on behalf of manufacturers that account for more than a quarter of the EU’s output of hot-rolled coil, according to the commission.

Under EU rules, the commission has eight months to decide whether to impose provisional anti-dumping duties against Turkey and 14 months to decide whether to hit the country with “definitive” levies, which usually last for five years.