Posted on 27 Mar 2019
Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has extended existing defence measures of 15% on imports of hot rolled coil, cold rolled coil, plate, pipes, wire rod and profiles. These are applied to countries that do not have free trade agreements with Mexico and expired on 31 January, Kallanish notes.
“The persistence of the absence of conditions for distortion-free competition between the steel industries of different countries, along with a fall of prices and a diversion of trade due to the increase in global trade actions, makes it both necessary and urgent to extend the general import tax for 186 tariff groups of steel products,” the presidential decree states.
The tariffs were imposed as a temporary measure in 2015 to protect the local steel industry from increasing imports, mainly from Asia and Turkey. Since then, the safeguards have been renewed on a six-monthly basis.
The safeguard measures entered into force on 23 March 2019.
