United States Strengthens Metals Relationship With EU While Considering Russia Sanctions

United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai met with European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis on Thursday, October 13 to discuss opportunities to strengthen the U.S.-EU trade and economic relationship.

Ambassador Tai also touted the successful first meeting of the Trade and Labor Dialogue last month, during which U.S. and EU government, labor, and business representatives, discussed concerns related to the future of work and the impacts of the digital economy on workers, as well as advancing cooperation to benefit workers in the global economy.

The two also agreed to increase the pace of discussions about the global steel arrangement and they agreed to stay in close contact on these, and other topics, in the weeks ahead.

As a reminder, last October the United States and European Union took steps to re-establish historical transatlantic trade flows in steel and aluminum and to strengthen their partnership and address shared challenges in the steel and aluminum sector. As a part of that partnership, they intend to negotiate for the first time, a global arrangement to address carbon intensity and global overcapacity.

Click here to read the White House fact sheet on that agreement.

In other metals trade news, according to Bloomberg, the Biden administration is considering a ban on Russian aluminum imports as an additional economic sanction in response to Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. According to the Aluminum Association, previous sanctions in 2018 significantly reduced U.S. reliance on Russian metal from nearly 15 percent of primary aluminum supply in 2016 and 2017 to around five percent today.