Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo speaks during a media briefing at Sejong Government Complex, Tuesday. Courtesy of Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources
Korea has secured a dedicated 2.073 million metric ton duty-free steel quota under the European Union's new tariff-rate quota (TRQ), cushioning the impact of the bloc's tighter import restrictions that take effect Wednesday.
On Tuesday (local time), the EU announced the operational framework of its new steel import measures, which will replace existing safeguard measures, along with country-specific quota allocations.
Under the new measures, the EU has raised tariffs on out-of-quota imports to 50 percent from 25 percent across 30 steel product categories, while cutting total duty-free import volumes to 18.35 million tons from the previous 33.82 million tons annually, which is about a 46 percent reduction.
The new structure differentiates quotas by product and trade status, creating separate allocations for WTO country quotas, FTA country quotas and FTA-only shared quotas, effectively providing additional duty-free access to countries with EU free trade agreements, including Korea.
