Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure – in the Senedd at 1:56 pm on 15 June 2016.
Well, leaving the EU would, of course, not compromise steel jobs at all. We would have the freedom to do what the United States has done and slap a 522 per cent duty on cold-rolled steel as opposed to the 24 per cent duty that the EU has proposed. But I wonder can the Cabinet Secretary explain to me why the EU would want to put up any trade barriers against the UK when the figures announced only a couple of days ago show that we had in the first quarter of this year alone a deficit of £24 billion in our trade in goods. They have much more to lose than we have from a trade war.