The bureaucratic monster keeps growing. CBAM has been in force for 20 weeks – still full of errors, still unfinished, still an imposition on every entrepreneur who needs reliable figures. At the same time, the Commission is already actively working on extending CBAM to downstream products. More thousands of pages. More costs. More SMEs left to deal with the fallout.
And as if that were not enough: associations are simultaneously demanding that the safeguard successor – set to launch on 1 July 2026 with 50% tariffs and massive quota reductions – be extended to downstream steel products as well.
The simultaneous application of CBAM and steel tariffs is already artificially driving up price levels within the EU single market. Every additional euro spent on production costs in mechanical engineering or metal processing creates, with an eye on the US market, a further competitive disadvantage of 1.50 Euros. Other countries are already exploiting this European weakness to their own advantage.
What truly leaves me speechless is this: associations that are supposed to protect their member companies from exactly these kinds of price explosions and competitive disadvantages are now running large-scale campaigns in favour of expanding CBAM and steel tariffs.
One question always remains unanswered: who, in the end, is still supposed to be able to afford all those overpriced products Made in Europe?
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Thorsten Gerber, CEO Gerber Group, 12 May 2026
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