The European Union will suspend until the end of March 2025 the duties it imposed on U.S. imports in retaliation for U.S. tariffs on EU steel and aluminum, the EU official journal said on Tuesday. The 15-month extension is part of a pact by which Washington will also refrain from its tariffs of 25% on EU steel and 10% on EU aluminum imposed in 2018 by former President Donald Trump, so parking the dispute until after U.S. and EU elections.
The EU tariffs covered a range of U.S. goods from Harley Davidson motorcycles to bourbon whiskey and power boats. Washington previously agreed to suspend its tariffs for two years from January 2022, replacing them with quotas.
The two sides were supposed to agree on measures to tackle overcapacity before the end of this year, but negotiations stalled ahead of a U.S-EU summit in October. Washington has since offered to extend the tariff suspension to allow more time for talks.
The U.S. quota system allows up to 3.3 million metric tons of EU steel and 384,000 tons of aluminum into the United States tariff-free, reflecting past trade levels, with further amounts subject to tariffs. The European Commission has complained the system is rigid which meant EU steel was subject to some $264 million of U.S. tariffs last year, while the EU simply removed its retaliatory tariffs.
