7 November 2025 – The German steel summit is over. Many promises were made and even more lies were told to the German Chancellor and German politicians. Energy costs are supposed to fall, they only want to use domestic steel and advocate for tariffs from Brussels – steel from China is the central problem, even if the claim does not stand up to fact-checking and is a blatant lie.
Mr Merz: The steel summit lied to you completely!
Dear Chancellor Merz, you were completely lied to by the guests at your steel summit.
Normally, one would have to say that numbers don’t lie (unless you’ve falsified the statistics yourself), so as usual, we’ll use freely accessible and publicly available data (EUROSTAT). Because this lie needs to be cleared up.
Claim: Chinese steel is flooding the German market
In the first eight months of 2025, just under 839,000 tonnes of products affected by the current safeguard measure on certain steel products and intermediate products, known as slabs and billets, were imported into Germany. This corresponded to approximately 3.8% of German crude steel production in the same period.
Fact: Brazil floods German steel market with dumped slabs
The largest share of the 839,000 tonnes came from Brazil (11.3%), at a price that was 67% below the price of Chinese steel imports to Germany. Almost 99% of this was Brazilian steel slabs, which are processed into hot-rolled coil. This product is subject to anti-dumping duties of up to 63% against Brazil, which amounts to a clear circumvention of existing EU market protection measures. The largest Brazilian steelmaker, with more than 12.5 million tonnes of crude steel capacity, is ArcelorMittal Brasil.
Slabs: The great hypocrisy of EU steel mills
By August 2025, a total of almost 370,000 tonnes of slabs of Brazilian origin had been imported into the European Union at a price approximately 12% below that of Chinese slabs. This is not particularly easy to compare for Germany, as only dumped cheap slabs from Brazil (93,000 tonnes) were imported (or flooded?) and processed by German steel mills, and almost none from China (1,744 tonnes).
Of course, we do not want to ignore the fact that almost 780,000 tonnes of slabs from China and approximately 2.5 million tonnes of slabs from Russia were also imported into the EU.
Slabs worthless for steel-consuming industry
Slabs are of little value except to the large integrated steel mills in the EU, as only they have the necessary walking beam furnaces to preheat the slabs for further processing into hot-rolled coil. In total, slab imports amounted to more than 6 million tonnes in the first eight months. That is 22% of the relevant steel imports into the EU. This makes domestic steel mills not only the largest importers, but also the biggest political and economic hypocrites.
Claim: Chinese steel is sold at dumping prices
The average price of steel imported from China to Germany between January and August 2025 was approximately €1,500 per tonne.
Fact: Brazilian steel is dumped into the market
This put China right in the middle of the pack and, in terms of steel prices, well above Brazil (€488 per tonne), Vietnam, Algeria, Turkey and even above import prices from the United Kingdom (€1,434 per tonne)!
It could hardly be clearer that the claim that cheap Chinese steel is flooding the German market is simply a lie and was just copied from press releases issued by steel mills.
Worse still, it has been proven that German politicians and the Chancellor were lied to in order to obtain billions in subsidies for energy, new mills and a closed market. In the end, it is the manufacturing industry and the voters who foot the bill, as they are burdened with the costs.
Latest news
- CBAM: Car Manufacturers Urge Commission to Take Action
- Surge in Demand: U.S. Steel Producer Closes Order Books
- Germanys Largest Steelmaker Quits Steel Association
We at the Gerber Group have been trading in stainless steel worldwide for over 20 years. We are your experts when it comes to purchasing, import, logistics and services. Information is a vital part of this. Because only then can you and we make the right decisions. Do you have any questions? Contact us now.
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.
