United States Tariffs: Steel and Aluminium

Lady Hermon Excerpts

Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

The US Department of Defence has made it quite clear that it fully understands the contribution that the United Kingdom makes. Its report made it clear that it did not believe the use of section 232 was the appropriate means of dealing with concerns about global overcapacity. I hope that the good sense of the Department of Defence will be diffused throughout Washington.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

May I commend to the Secretary of State the experience of Bombardier? In recent months, it risked losing thousands of jobs because of unfairly imposed US tariffs of 300%. The winning formula for defeating that proposal—and having it unanimously thrown out in the US—involved a combination of trade unions, management, local MPs and Ministers right across the Government, along with the personal intervention of the Prime Minister when she spoke to President Trump at the Davos economic summit. That strategy worked for Bombardier, so may I commend it to the Secretary of State and suggest that it is repeated in order to protect the steel industry in the United Kingdom?

[Dr Fox]

We have had, as I said earlier, a wide range of contacts in a wide range of areas. The International Trade Commission was ultimately the vehicle that sorted out the Bombardier case, so there are still in the United States those elements of an independent, free trading policy that we can rely on, on occasions when they are needed. It was not just the politics ultimately, hard though we tried for Bombardier, but the American mechanism itself—the ITC—that has a lot to be commended for.