India relatively safe from US' steel and aluminium tariffs, levy to hit over 63 nations

Steel and aluminium tariffs won't impact India and China as much as others

Washington, DC's imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminium products entering the US is set to disrupt nearly 10 percent of the global trade in commodities and more than half the 121 countries involved, but India may escape the brunt despite the US being among the top two nations that import Indian metals, as per a Moneycontrol analysis.

While the US accounted for 7.5 percent of India’s total exports of steel in 2023, analysis shows that India was among the most diversified nations when it came to steel and aluminium exports.

Only 55 percent of exports were headed to the top 10 trading partners compared with the global average of 86.5 percent. The only other countries to do better than India in terms of diversification were China and Turkey, where less than 50 percent of exports were reliant on top 10 trading partners.

India counts Italy, South Korea and Malaysia as its top trading destinations besides the US. Over a tenth of the country’s exports were headed to Italy in 2023, while South Korea and Malaysia had 6.7 percent and 6.2 percent share, respectively.

In the case of China, just 4 percent of steel products were headed to the US.

India's steel secretary said on Wednesday that the industry does not see a major impact from tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump on steel imports as they do not export much steel to the country. "To US, we export less than 100,000 metric tonnes," Sandeep Poundrik told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi.

“It’s going to mean a lot of businesses are going to be opening in the United States,” Trump said on February 11 as he signed the executive order imposing a 25 percent tariff on all imports of steel and aluminium entering US territory.

A Moneycontrol analysis shows that the US was among the top 10 importing nations for 63 of the 121 countries that exported $644 billion of steel and aluminium products and top five trading partners with 39 of these countries.

In the 10 countries where the US was the top trading partner, the average share was 54 percent of total exports. In the five countries, including India, where it was the second highest trading partner, the average share was 14.2 percent. The share was 10 percent for the six nations where it was the third largest trading partner.