Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2663 actions· ✨ 89 recent

The UK Finance Act 2026, which received Royal Assent on 18 March 2026, establishes the primary statutory framework for the United Kingdom Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (UK CBAM), granting HM Revenue & Customs the assessment, collection, and enforcement powers needed to apply a carbon-content levy on imports of aluminium, cement, fertilisers, hydrogen, and iron & steel from 1 January 2027. Two tranches of draft secondary legislation (the CBAM Regulations 2026 covering administration, rate calculation/carbon-price relief, emissions and verification, and transitory provisions) were published for technical consultation on 10 February 2026 (closing 24 March 2026) and again in Spring 2026 (closing 21 May 2026). The mechanism imposes a UK ETS-linked benchmark price on the embedded carbon of in-scope imports, with a credit for verified third-country carbon prices already paid, and — unlike the EU CBAM — has no transitional reporting phase and a narrower initial sectoral scope (no electricity).

Brazil's Foreign Trade Chamber Executive Committee (GECEX/CAMEX) imposed a five-year definitive antidumping duty on imports of flat-rolled carbon steel products galvanized (by electrolytic or other process, except corrugated) or aluminium-coated — including aluminium-zinc and other metal-alloy coatings — originating in China, classified under fifteen NCM subheadings spanning 7210.30, 7210.49, 7210.61, 7210.69, 7212.20, 7212.30, 7225.91, 7225.92, 7225.99, and 7226.99. The resolution was adopted at GECEX's 234th ordinary meeting on 13 February 2026 and entered into force upon publication in the Diário Oficial da União (Edição 32) on 18 February 2026. Duties are applied as a specific tariff in USD per metric tonne, with individual rates for cooperating Chinese exporters and a residual rate for non-cooperating producers.

Argentina's Ministry of Economy issued Resolución 1254/2025 (Boletín Oficial, 27 August 2025) approving the adhesion of Generación Eléctrica Argentina Renovable I SA's dedicated branch ("GEAR I SDE") to the Régimen de Incentivo para Grandes Inversiones (RIGI) under Law 27.742, for the 180 MW "P.E. Olavarría" wind farm in Olavarría, Buenos Aires province. The declared total investment is USD 275.59 million (USD 255.11 million in computable assets), granting the project RIGI's 30-year tax, customs and FX-stability package. GEAR I SDE's accession dates to 25 July 2025; it must reach 40% of the minimum qualifying investment within two years and complete the minimum by 30 November 2027. The plant is designed to supply ArcelorMittal Acindar's Argentine steel plants directly rather than to export power, substituting an estimated 20% of national electricity consumption equivalent for the offtaker and qualifying for import-tariff relief on capital goods under Law 27.742 Article 190.

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/612 of 24 March 2025 amends the EU steel safeguard regime first imposed by Regulation (EU) 2019/159, materially tightening the tariff-rate quota (TRQ) system that governs imports across 26 product categories of finished and semi-finished steel. The Commission cuts the annual liberalisation rate (the volume by which TRQs grow each year) from 1% to 0.1%, effectively freezing the in-quota volumes available to third-country exporters at near-current levels through the safeguard's expiry on 30 June 2026. The regulation also repeals the carry-over mechanism that previously allowed unused quarterly TRQ volumes to roll into the next quarter for product categories under significant import pressure, and eliminates the ability of exporting countries to access the residual (other-country) quota in the final quarter of each safeguard year for those categories. The latter change forecloses the route by which Chinese, Indian, Turkish, Korean and Vietnamese mills had increasingly back-filled into unused Russian and Belarusian quota allocations after the 2022 sanctions disruption. Most adjustments enter into force on 1 April 2025; the slower liberalisation pace and the carry-over removal in the most pressured categories take effect 1 July 2025. The measure is the headline trade-policy deliverable of the European Steel and Metals Action Plan unveiled by the Commission on 19 March 2025, and it is explicitly framed as a defensive response to (i) global overcapacity in Chinese steel and (ii) anticipated trade diversion into the EU after the United States reinstated universal 25% Section 232 steel/aluminum tariffs on 12 March 2025. Above-quota imports remain subject to the 25% out-of-quota duty inherited from the 2019 safeguard.

On 19 March 2025 the European Commission adopted the European Steel and Metals Action Plan (COM(2025) 122 final, IP/25/805) — the first standalone sector-specific industrial-policy framework for the EU steel and base-metals industries (~2.6m direct + indirect jobs). The Plan bundles six work strands — affordable energy, trade defence and circularity (including announced replacement of the post-30 Jun 2026 steel safeguard with a "highly effective" successor measure and a melt-and-pour origin requirement), lead-market measures (Steel and Metals Industrial Decarbonisation Bank with a EUR 100bn target and a EUR 1bn pilot auction in 2025, "Made in EU" criteria in public and defence procurement), capacity and investment funding, scrap and critical-input circularity (including CBAM extension to downstream steel and aluminium products by end-2025), and skills / just transition.

Regulation (EU) 2023/956 of the European Parliament and of the Council, published in OJ L 130 on 16 May 2023 and entering into force on 17 May 2023, establishes the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) — the Union's primary instrument for preventing carbon leakage at the external border. The regulation applies an equivalent carbon price to embedded greenhouse gas emissions in imports of six sector groups (iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertilizers, electricity, and hydrogen) from non-EU/EEA/Swiss counterparts, complementing the EU Emissions Trading System's domestic coverage. A transitional reporting-only phase operated from 1 October 2023 through 31 December 2025; the definitive certificate-purchase-and-surrender regime entered full application from 1 January 2026.

The EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) entered its definitive phase on 1 January 2026 following a transitional reporting period that began October 2023. Under Regulation (EU) 2023/956, importers of goods in six carbon-intensive sectors (iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertilizers, electricity, and hydrogen) must now purchase CBAM certificates corresponding to embedded carbon emissions. The Q1 2026 certificate price was set at EUR 75.36 per tonne CO2, calculated from EU ETS auction prices. In 2026, the adjustment factor is 2.5%, rising annually to 100% by 2034.