In a joint announcement Monday, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, Commerce Secretary Gina M. Raimondo and European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said they recognize the impacts of global excess capacity on their domestic steel industries. 

“The distortions that result from this excess capacity pose a serious threat to the market-oriented EU and U.S. steel and aluminum industries and the workers in those industries,” they said.

With the announcement, the European Union is temporarily halting a planned increase in retaliatory tariffs aimed at American goods, including whiskey and Harley-Davidson motorcycles. The EU imposed the tariffs after the Trump administration put in place the Section 232 tariffs in 2018.

The American Iron and Steel Institute applauded the planned talks on overcapacity.

“We are grateful for the administration’s commitment to addressing this crisis, to preserving and improving measures to address unfair trade and to recognizing that the American steel industry is critical to our national and economic security,” said Kevin Dempsey, AISI president and chief executive.

“To be successful, the bilateral discussions must take into account that, while China is the single largest source of global steel oversupply, subsidies and other market-distorting policies in many countries are contributing to the overcapacity crisis — and that injurious surges in imports have come from every region of the world,” he added.