steel

Published on 20/02/2026 – 12:34 GMT+1•Updated
12:35

European steel shipments to the US declined 30% between June and December 2025 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to recent Eurostat data compiled by Eurofer, the Brussels-based industry group.

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The decline underscores the impact of the US’s 50% tariffs on EU steel, even after the EU and US signed a trade agreement in July 2025 agreeing a blanket 15% US tariff on EU goods. Steel was carved out of that deal and talks to ease duties remain stuck.

“A 30% drop in steel exports to the US within just six months is a clear signal that the blunt 50% tariffs imposed by the US government on EU steel are damaging our industry,” Eurofer Director general Axel Eggert said.

“The US decision to include EU downstream steel products, such as machinery, will have another huge negative impact on us and our European customers,” he added.

Washington imposed 50% tariffs on EU steel and aluminium in June 2025 and extended the measures to more than 400 steel and aluminium products in August.

Steel talks tied to EU-US trade deal enforcement

The US has framed the tariffs as a shield against Chinese overcapacity flooding global markets, including Europe.

With Chinese exports increasingly redirected from the US to the EU, the European Commission proposed on 7 October 2025 to halve the volume of steel allowed into the bloc duty-free and to levy a 50% tariff on imports exceeding a quota of 18.3 million tons a year.

The proposal steel needs to be adopted by the EU legislator. Meanwhile Brussels itself hopes to reopen talks with the White House to secure lower duties on EU steel.

But US negotiators have linked any resumption of discussions to the implementation of last summer’s EU-US trade deal, struck by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and President Donald Trump. Under that pact, the EU agreed to cut its tariffs on US goods to zero while accepting 15% duties on its exports to the US.

With the EU legislative process still requiring approval from lawmakers and member states, Washington’s patience is wearing thin. Tensions could rise further after EU lawmakers introduced amendments that may complicate talks with capitals.

The European Parliament is expected to vote on the deal in March, paving the way for negotiations with member states.

The talks stalled on the European side after the US threatened to annex Greenland militarily from Denmark in January. Although the US has softened its language, it led to delays. The administration’s continuous lobbying for less stringent rules when it comes to digital legislation in Europe has also added obstacles to the talks.

Published on
17/02/2026 – 8:00 GMT+1

Four years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Union is still importing Russian steel – and not everyone is happy about it.

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Next week, MEPs and EU member states will begin negotiations on whether to ban Russian steel outright. What began as a sanctions debate has morphed into a high-stakes political fight.

Swedish lawmaker Karin Karlsbro is preparing to take on the EU council, which represents the member states, with Belgium, Italy, the Czech Republic and Denmark all arguing that they still need imports of unfinished steel for major construction projects.

“It is a big provocation that we haven’t done everything possible to limit Putin’s war chest,” Karlsbro told Euronews. “The Russian steel industry is a backbone of Russian war, it is the Russian war machinery.”

Finished Russian steel was banned in 2022, but semi-finished steel, a key input for further processing, was spared after a number of countries secured an exemption until 2028 to cushion the blow to their industries.

“Unfinished steel can’t be produced anywhere in the EU,” a European diplomat from one of those countries told Euronews, “while it is required for big infrastructures.”

Three million tonnes

Karlsbro says she was astonished to learn that EU imports of Russian steel amount to nearly 3 million tonnes a year, roughly equivalent to Sweden’s entire annual output and worth around €1.7 billion.

For her, the type of steel is beside the point.

“There is absolutely no argument that this is special steel or highly qualified steel with any essential quality. There is simply no additional reason to buy this steel,” she said.

To bypass the unanimity required for the adoption of EU sanctions by the member states, Karlsbro inserted a ban on Russian steel into a separate European Commission proposal aimed at shielding the bloc from global steel overcapacity, as US tariffs divert excess supply toward Europe.

The European Parliament’s trade committee approved the move on 27 January.

The procedural shift is crucial. Unlike sanctions, the trade file requires onlythe support ofa qualified majority of EU countries, potentially sidelining governments that might otherwise veto a full ban.

“The Parliament is playing politics on this,” an industry source familiar with the file told Euronews.

Another diplomat from a country dependent on Russian semi-finished steel said the ban was important for his government, which is why the 2028 deadline has been set – highlighting the dilemma the EU faces as it balances industrial needs with the need to confront the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The talks are beginning as the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion approaches, and the clock is ticking. By June, the EU must adopt the Commission’s plan to shield its market from a glut of global steel.

One diplomat insisted the two files – banning Russian steel and protecting the EU market from overcapacity – pursue “totally different goals”.

Still, the same diplomat acknowledged the ban could pass, as there are not enough member states pushing to maintain a phase-out only by 2028.

Pete Finney, a steel guitarist who toured with Patty Loveless for more than 20 years and recorded with Reba McEntire, the Chicks, Vince Gill, the Judds and more, has died. He was 70.

Confirmation came via a statement earlier this week from Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, which said Finney died Saturday. No cause of death was provided.

Calling him “a widely admired Nashville musician,” the museum said Finney “exemplified how top instrumentalists can adapt to a remarkable range of styles and settings, whether in a recording studio, a concert stage, or the corner of a small nightclub.”

Finney was born in Maryland in September 1955 and played his first gigs in Washington, D.C., with singer-songwriter Liz Meyer before Meyer moved to the Netherlands in the mid-1980s. He relocated to Austin, Texas, in the late 1970s and then moved to Nashville in the mid-1980s.

Upon his arrival in Tennessee, Finney toured with Foster & Lloyd and later contributed to the solo careers of Radney Foster and Bill Lloyd. His career would take him in diverse directions: He recorded with Beck, Jon Byrd, Shemekia Copeland, Justin Townes Earle, Jon Langford, Jim Lauderdale, Allison Moorer, Ron Sexsmith, Candi Staton and scores of other artists.

“RIP old friend!” wrote Asleep at the Wheel frontman Ray Benson in a comment on a Facebook post announcing Finney’s death. His was one of hundreds of comments, many left by those who had known Finney. “Pete came to a concert in 1970 and saw Asleep at the Wheel he told me that was when he decided to play pedal steel… and play he did with style grace and total command of that instrument! Hard to lose a great friend who was there at the beginning of it all for me and so many in those early Wash DC days.”

Finney was something of a music historian as well, co-curating the Hall of Fame museum’s 2015-2018 exhibition “Dylan, Cash, and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City” and co-writing the exhibit’s accompanying book, which won the 2016 Chet Flippo Award for excellence in country music journalism from the International Country Music Conference.

“The idea for the exhibit came from Finney’s research on the many non-country artists from North America and England who came to Nashville in the 1960s and 1970s to record with the city’s talented and fast-working studio musicians,” the museum said.

Finney hosted programs at the Hall of Fame museum and participated in panel discussions frequently over the years.

The musician married singer Carol Tully on Oct. 15, 2017.

He was touring with Reba McEntire in 1991 when one of the tour’s planes crashed into a mountain near San Diego, claiming the lives of eight band members on their way to a show in Fort Wayne, Ind. Finney was traveling in the second plane to take off from a municipal airport that night; the first was the one that went down. McEntire was not on either plane.

“The planes took off three minutes apart,” a spokeswoman for McEntire told The Times after the March 1991 crash. “The plane that crashed took off first. The pilot of the second plane didn’t see anything. They just knew that they had lost radio contact with the other. They continued flying and were diverted to Nashville.”

Years later, when he was recruited by Mike Nesmith in 2017 to join the revival of the Monkees singer-songwriter’s country-rock group the First National Band, Finney stepped up to replace founding member Red Rhodes, who died in 1995.

“Finney often used Rhodes’ innovative parts from the recordings as his starting point, but frequently added dimensions of his own to prevent the set from simply replicating the original versions,” detailed former Times music writer Randy Lewis in a feature on a 2018 show by the reconstituted group. “Rhodes — and Finney — employ the steel guitar inventively, not just to evoke notes of melancholy often found in country music, but to bring an orchestra’s worth of color, texture and shading to the arrangements.”

In 2021, Finney joined the final Monkees tour, which included Mickey Dolenz as well as Nesmith and wrapped before Nesmith’s death that December.

The Hall of Fame said Finney “frequently performed in pickup bands in small Nashville clubs, where he might be seen with top-flight players such as Mac Gayden, Jen Gunderman, Jimmy Lester, Chris Scruggs, Kenny Vaughan, and others.”

Singer-songwriter and podcaster Otis Gibbs, who had Finney on his show several times, remembered frequently seeing the steel guitarist out on the Nashville music scene.

“I’d sometimes run into him 4, or 5 nights a week at shows,” Gibbs wrote Tuesday on his website. “If there were 9 people in attendance, Pete would usually be one of them. He’d joke that he liked seeing me at shows because he’d know it must be the place to be.”

Gibbs said he saw Finney just three weeks ago at a Jon Byrd show in East Nashville.

“I snuck up next to him and whispered, ‘I must be at the right show because Pete Finney’s here,’” he wrote. “That was the last time I saw him.”

Finney is survived by his wife. Friends and family are invited to a remembrance gathering Sunday at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s Ford Theater in Nashville.