Manufacturing What Trump’s steel tariffs mean to the Middle East By Chris Hamill-Stewart February 11, 2025, 1:10 AM Getty Images/Unsplash A significant volume of steel will need to find alternative customers when President Trump's proposed tariffs come in Turkish steel makers most at risk GCC producers have alternatives Real targets are China and Canada Donald Trump’s proposed US steel tariffs will put Turkish producers most at risk in the Middle East, while Gulf steel exporters will be sheltered from the worst of the damage, experts have told AGBI. On Sunday Mr Trump, the newly elected US president, said he would soon unveil 25 percent import taxes on all steel and aluminium imports to the United States, adding that these would be for “everyone”. Kaye Ayub, head of price analysis at the UK steel market insights company MEPS International, told AGBI: “With these new tariffs in place, a significant volume of steel will need to find alternative customers. “Suppliers in the Middle East will find themselves competing with producers in Asia, and particularly China, as exports are redirected from the US to other markets, increasing competition in the region.” The Middle East exported nearly 900,000 tonnes of steel to the US in 2024, of which roughly 400,000 tonnes came from Turkey. “Steel producers who export their products to the US will be the ones who will be more at risk. Those in Turkey may face the greatest challenges, with a weak domestic market exacerbating the effect on their business,” Ayub said. Matthew Watkins, principal analyst for steel at the commodities research company CRU Group in London, said that the GCC represented around 6 percent of extra-regional steel export volumes. “A potential reduction in access to that market would therefore not be painless for GCC producers. But they would probably be able to find alternate markets if necessary,” he said. Watkins said that for Gulf producers, China and the EU were far more important markets, though the US remains the third largest export market for GCC steel. The primary targets of the Trump steel tariffs were Canada and China, not the GCC, Watkins said, and the GCC market was “one where there are already moves to investigate introducing separate import tariffs on a significant portion of the traded volume.” Shares in a number of regional steel producers were trading lower after Mr Trump’s tariff announcement. The UAE producer EMSteel was trading down 1.6 percent, the Saudi Arabian mining company Ma’aden was down 1.3 percent, and the Turkish steel producer Erdemir was down 2.8 percent. Trump tariffs ‘pose long-term risk to Gulf’, say economists Trump’s tariffs will not move oil prices, says Goldman Sachs Trump’s tariffs inject volatility into metal markets During Mr Trump’s first four-year term from 2017, he imposed tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports, but later granted several countries exemptions. In 2024 the Middle East accounted for 54 megatonnes of global steel production out of a total global production of 1,839 megatonnes.
