European steel exports have fallen by a fifth with production at historic lows as the industry contends with soaring energy costs, US tariffs and the knock-on impacts of vast oversupply from China. Exports to the US fell by 29 per cent in the first half of 2026 compared with a year before owing to US tariffs of 50 per cent on EU steel imports, according to figures from the European steel industry body Eurofer. Exports to Turkey, India and China all fell by at least 18 per cent as European companies were outcompeted by cheaper foreign production. Overall exports dropped 20 per cent, while raw steel production in the bloc fell 3 per cent to 126mn tonnes in 2025 and dropped a further 1 per cent in the first five months of this year before making a small recovery of 1.1 per cent growth in May, Eurofer said.
"We are the only major region adapting steel capacity downwards," Axel Eggert, director-general of Eurofer told the FT, adding that industry would "not go back" to previous production highs of around 155mn tonnes in 2015. Europe is the second biggest steel-producing region worldwide but its output pales compared with Asia which accounts for almost three-quarters of global crude steel production, while Europe makes up 14 per cent. The bloc is the fourth biggest exporting region after China, Japan and South Korea but is the top importer, according to World Steel.
Brussels has made more efforts in the past two years to protect Europe’s steel industry as it becomes increasingly apparent that the continent could lose critical domestic supply chains for its defence and infrastructure sectors. While Brussels has imposed anti-dumping duties of up to 90 per cent in some cases on specific Chinese imports such as steel cylinders, that has resulted in the diversion of more Chinese products into other markets where European steelmakers were attempting to compete. Geert Van Poelvoorde, chair of the board of Arcelor Mittal Europe and incoming president of industry body Eurofer, said that Europe’s high cost base was "dangerous", making steel products for customers such as automakers too expensive to sell abroad.
"When Europe is going to limit its production to only internal consumption, there is no problem because the inhabitants will pay a bit more. The cost for the green products is not dramatically internal, but export is highly problematic," he added. Steelmakers still face multiple challenges including perennially high energy costs being pushed even higher by the Middle East conflict, with EU gas prices having surged more than 140 per cent since the start of the year. The European Commission introduced trade quotas in July to protect the industry and has also included steel in its carbon border tax (CBAM). CBAM charges foreign exporters an additional tax to bring their costs in line with European producers who have to pay for EU carbon permits to cover their emissions.
Eggert said the trade measures had helped the sector’s output with forecast growth of 1.5 per cent after two years of declines, but the recovery was coming from a "very, very low level" at a time when steelmakers were also facing increasingly steep investment costs in order to decarbonise. China was exporting around the same amount as the EU’s total market production, he added, and that was the "tip of the iceberg". Astrid Grigsby-Schulte, iron and steel lead at the NGO Global Energy Monitor, said that the EU was home to half of all developing green steel production and that was a "huge advantage".
Source: Financial Times Companies · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing