PM imposes steel tariffs to win back Red Wall

Trade war feared as Johnson ready to break WTO rules to protect jobs in the North

BORIS JOHNSON will risk fresh allegations that he is breaking international law this week, as he imposes sweeping new steel tariffs as part of an effort to win back support in Red Wall seats.

The Prime Minister is preparing to hit several developing countries with new “safeguard” import limits designed to protect UK manufacturers from a “flood of cheap steel” from overseas.

At the same time, ministers will announce a two-year extension of steel tariffs already imposed on developed countries and China.

The moves, which are being finalised for an announcement this week, will expose Mr Johnson to allegations that he is breaching World Trade Organisation rules in order to protect the British steel industry.

They are the changes cited by Lord Geidt, the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser, when he quit earlier this month, saying that he was put in an “odious position” of being asked to “license” a breach of the ministerial code, which requires ministers to abide by international law.

But Mr Johnson, who is coming under mounting pressure over his leadership of the Conservative Party, is gambling on the move being backed by Labour, which has previously pushed for steel tariffs, and winning support among Red Wall voters and MPs.

A No 10 source said: “We will act in the national interest.”

Some senior government figures are also concerned that imposing tariffs on further developing countries could lead to a trade war, with retaliatory measures applied to UK exports such as whisky. They also fear it will damage British manufacturers who rely on imported steel.

A Government figure opposed to the extension of tariffs to more developing countries said: “This is going to screw the economy. It is a total violation of the WTO rules.

“The Prime Minister said he had recognised that we have to govern as Conservatives but this is anti-Conservative, anti-free market and anti-capitalist.”

The move has been informally agreed by key Cabinet ministers but final details will be signed off in the coming days. Friends of Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, said he is “instinctively anti-protectionist” but understands the desire to protect UK jobs and industry.

Red Wall Conservative MPs have been lobbying the Prime Minister to impose the measures amid fears that a “glut” of steel from abroad is severely undermining British firms.

Tata Steel, the UK-based metals giant with production sites in Corby, Northants, and Hartlepool, has told ministers that if imports “continue to flow into the UK at [the] same pace, let alone grow, it may cause irreparable damage to the UK industry”.

It has accused “certain developing countries “of abusing their position”.

The move comes amid growing anger among Tory MPs over the party’s byelection losses in Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton last week. Many backbenchers and ministers now fear for their seats and are considering another attempt to oust the Prime Minister. In other developments:

✦ Mr Johnson claimed he is making plans for three terms in Downing Street, meaning he would remain Prime Minister until the mid-2030s.

✦ A poll suggests that voters are turning on the Government and the Bank of England over the cost-of-living crisis, with almost one in three saying that excessive public spending is “significantly” to blame for high inflation.

✦ Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Damian Green, the influential leader of

the One Nation Conservatives caucus, warns the Government is becoming “ineffectual” in helping with voters’ “day-to-day lives” and urges the Cabinet to “[show] leadership qualities”;

✦ In another article for this newspaper, David Davis, the former Brexit Secretary, attacks Mr Johnson for claiming that the only policy change demanded by his critics is to rejoin the EU’s single market. “The biggest policy difference is that we want our government to stop talking about tax reductions and actually deliver them,” Mr Davis writes;

✦ Thérèse Coffey, the Work and Pensions Secretary, used an interview to announce that benefits claimants will have to work longer hours in order to be released from job centre visits, under a crackdown devised with Rishi Sunak.

Steel products fall into 19 categories, all of which were protected by antidumping safeguards until last summer, to keep out cheap competitors.

Last year, the Trade Remedies Authority (TRA) recommended scrapping these safeguards on nine products.

Following a battle with Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, who backs safeguards, Ms Truss, who was then Trade Secretary, decided to ditch the protections on only four categories, which are not mass produced in Britain.

With those protections expiring this week, the TRA has advised Anne-Marie Trevelyan, Ms Truss’s successor, there is “evidence that supports a conclusion that extending the safeguard measure where possible at individual product category level is necessary to prevent or remedy serious injury or threat of serious injury to UK producers”.

The TRA has advised Ms Trevelyan that India, Tunisia, Vietnam and Turkey have exceeded an imports quota for developing countries, meaning they should also be subjected to the tariffs applied to other states. Sources said Brazil and Korea would also be hit.

Ms Trevelyan’s “proposed approach” is set out in a Government document that states: “The Secretary of State has taken into account the TRA’s findings and concluded that the maintenance of TRQs [tariff rate quotas] is necessary to remedy serious injury. The Secretary of State also recognised that adjustments were required to certain TRQ’s to better reflect trade flows.”