Special steelmaker Voestalpine attributed an 11% fall in its earnings for the first half of 2018 to continuing global trade conflicts, it said late last week.
The Austrian company reported a decline of 11.2% in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) over April-September 2018, the first half of its financial year, to ?,?860 million ($969 million). This compared with ?,?969 million in the corresponding period last year.It blamed this on "distortions of international trade in the wake of increasingly protectionist tendencies in an ever-growing number of countries."The United States used its Section 232 trade regulations to impose tariffs of 25% on steel imports and 10% on aluminium imports from Canada, Mexico and the EU on June 1 this year.The European Commission then imposed preliminary measures in a regional safeguard case on July 18 in the form of tariff rate quotas on 23 steel product categories, based on average import volumes over the past three years. Imports will face a 25% tariff if the quota is exceeded."We did raise revenues yet again [in April-September] compared...