STEEL INDUSTRY: ITAC ready to cut steel downstream at the throat: Swooping preliminary determinations published.

Dear Steel Industry employer

On 20 August 2025, the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa (ITAC) published a notice regarding the proposed preliminary import surveillance systems and additional duties considered for implementation.

The content of this notice is long, technical and loaded with possible devastating consequences for employers in the South African steel downstream, should they be implemented.

Here are the most important proposed interventions by ITAC:

1. More than 600 different steel products are to be subjected to import duties, from all countries, up to their respective World Trade Organisation (WTO) bound rates.

• The respective bound rates range from 10% to 30%, depending on the product.

  
  

• The problem with ITAC’s blanket approach towards import duties, is that it doesn’t distinguish between the “flooding” of the South African market with cheaper finished products from, predominantly, Asia, but also includes in its punishment, the import of good quality, affordable raw steel products from around the world, not produced, or produced at a far higher price, by AMSA or SAFAL, used by the majority of steel manufacturers and employers in the steel industry.

2. Additional rebate provisions have been created for certain steel products – ironically, these rebates are, for the larger part of the involved tariff codes, available only for products not locally produced or available at all, and only obtainable through imports.

• Furthermore, the rebates are qualified by ITAC, through their insertion of the phrase “in such quantities, at such times and subject to conditions as the International Trade Administration Commission may allow by specific permit, provided the products are not available in the SACU market”.

3. All products in Table 3 of the notice will be subjected to import control – that’s the fancy term for an import permit – which means an employer in the steel industry will have to apply for approval/permit to import any of the listed products (which is the largest part of steel products used by the South African steel downstream employers), and ITAC will solely decide on the granting or refusal of the permit.

• Taking into consideration ITAC’s continued protection of AMSA, one can only expect the blanket refusal of any application for an import permit for any product closely resembled by the more expensive, and usually long-awaited AMSA counterpart.

  
  

• Any permit granted, should there be any, will also be subject to further rigorous, compulsory standard specifications as set by ITAC.

4. ITAC plans on forming a committee comprising “industry role players” and members of the Commission, to advise it on steel-related matters. What a sham! NEASA bears first-hand knowledge of the little regard ITAC has for any steel industry role players and their advice on steel matters that does not appease the monopolistic interests of the primary steel producers in South Africa.

• Public comments and submissions, despite the majority being against a proposed decision by ITAC, are ignored and filed away somewhere in an ITAC Commissioner’s desk drawer.

  
  

• Public interest and other hearings are a circus with no real possibility for preliminary decisions to be swayed, regardless of concrete evidence on the negative impacts, possible job losses and company closures to follow.

The long and short of these “preliminary” decisions are the following:

ITAC decides it’s time to wave goodbye to the South African steel downstream.

Interested parties have two (2) weeks to make further representations on the proposed interventions – what the use thereof would be, is uncertain. However, NEASA urges all affected employers in the steel industry to stand up as a collective and oppose these devastating proposals, by sending their objections to rmolala@itac.org.za, pphaswana@itac.org.za, nsikhakhana@itac.org.za and pmatsepane@itac.org.za.

Please also forward all comments, representations and inputs to NEASA, at rona@neasa.co.za.

For more information

NEASA Media Department

media@neasa.co.za

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