28 July 2026 – A warning about potential CBAM traps: beware of offers claiming zero CBAM costs. Calls for even more steel tariffs, bureaucracy and losses of competitiveness, and a convoy heading in what is clearly the wrong direction.
Warning: Beware of Offers Claiming Zero CBAM Costs
We consider it our duty to warn readers about potential honeypot traps linked to CBAM.
The Case
An unusually attractive offer from Southeast Asia is currently circulating on the European market: a low price, combined with the claim that the associated CBAM costs amount to zero (0) euros. This caught our attention because the mill concerned had been considered a high priced supplier for years and is now suddenly supposed to be the cheapest.
We informed the supplier, in factual terms, that the emissions data available to us for the mill in question were entirely different. We therefore asked for the relevant supporting documentation from the mill, as this would undoubtedly also be of interest to our readers.
The Response
The reply was extremely terse, and the supplier preferred to end all further communication with us on the matter.
An enquiry in the supplier’s domestic market indicated that this was not considered a suitable supplier and that the company had acquired a certain reputation in the market.
We leave the precise interpretation of this information to the reader. We have drawn our own conclusions.
The Learning
Until all the facts are on the table and the emissions figures have been substantiated with reliable evidence, offers of this kind should be treated with the utmost scepticism.
After all, it is never the supplier who pays or bears liability for incorrect figures. It is always the customer or importer.
Remark: Stainless Steel Slabs and CBAM
In a fitting coincidence, we received updated CO2 data from a major Southeast Asian mill this morning. These figures make it easier to understand why EU stainless steel mills are so eagerly purchasing slabs from that source. Someone has secured themselves quite a bargain.
Even More Steel Tariffs? The Convoy Heading in the Wrong Direction
EUROMETAL is calling for a “European Convoy for Industrial Competitiveness” outside the Commission’s headquarters on 7 September. Lorries are expected to roll into Brussels under the slogan “Keep Manufacturing in Europe”.
It is worth taking a closer look at the organisation’s membership structure. EUROMETAL does represent medium sized distributors, but much of its weight comes from the distribution subsidiaries and service centres of the major European steel mills and groups.
What presents itself here as the voice of the value chain is, to a considerable extent, the voice of the producers, delivered through their own subsidiaries. The metalworking SMEs that buy and process the steel are probably relegated to the children’s table in this arrangement.
What Exactly Is the Protest For?
The decisive issue is not that a demonstration is taking place, but what it is seeking to achieve.
The new steel tariffs have been in force since 1 July: a duty free quota of 18.3 million tonnes, with a 50 per cent tariff outside the quota, in addition to the regular third country customs duty. From October, the obligation to provide evidence of “melt and pour” origin will also apply.
Anyone taking to the streets under these conditions to demand “greater competitiveness”, without calling for the abolition of quotas and punitive tariffs, is effectively demonstrating in favour of expanding and tightening the very instruments that are destroying the cost base of the manufacturing industry.
They are demonstrating for more bureaucracy, more customs procedures, more documentation requirements and higher costs.
An association whose justification for existence grows alongside the complexity of the regulatory system has an understandable interest in this. A machining company with 40 employees in Baden Württemberg does not.
Tariffs: 96 Per Cent of the Cost Is Passed on to Domestic Buyers
The empirical evidence is unequivocal. The Kiel Institute for the World Economy analysed more than 25 million shipment records worth almost four trillion US dollars.
The result was that foreign exporters bore only around 4 per cent of the tariff burden, while 96 per cent was passed on to domestic buyers. Research Director Julian Hinz describes the claim that foreign countries pay the tariffs as a myth. Tariffs function like a consumption tax and reduce both the variety and quantity of available goods.
The Cato Institute has reached the same conclusion for years, as have the Peterson Institute and the relevant literature examining the US Section 232 measures introduced in 2018. For every job saved in steel production, several times as many jobs were placed at risk in downstream manufacturing.
The Commission itself plays down the impact on prices, arguing that the effect remains limited because steel accounts for only a small proportion of most products. Anyone who has ever calculated the cost of manufacturing a vessel knows what that argument is worth.
Europe will not become competitive through higher walls
A convoy for competitiveness that demands market protection is a contradiction on wheels.
Europe will not become competitive through higher walls, but through cheaper energy, fewer reporting obligations and open markets.
Everything else is the defence of vested interests with the hazard lights flashing.
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Disclaimer: Many things here represent our opinion. Others are information from the Internet. We can therefore never claim to be correct or complete. And never base a business decision solely on the news you receive from us.
