Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:52 pm on 6 March 2018.

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Photo of Mr Neil Hamilton Mr Neil Hamilton UKIP 1:52, 6 March 2018

The First Minister knows that the United States' concern about steel exports to the United States is not with Britain, because actually there's been an 11 per cent reduction in the volume and value of steel that is exported from the UK to the US in the last two years. The quarrel is with countries like China, which produces half the world's steel and where there's massive excess capacity equivalent to the entire consumption of steel in the United States over one year, and countries like Vietnam and Canada, which export to the United States 10 times as much steel as we do. The President is concerned about the effect of the North American free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico. We happen to be caught up in the slipstream of all this. The response of the European Union to the President's announcement is likely to be disastrous whilst we are within the customs union, because the European Commission now says it wants to retaliate by introducing tariffs on cars, perhaps, and other manufactured goods, which could have massive impacts upon British workers' jobs and Welsh workers' jobs over many parts of the country. If we had an independent trade policy outside the customs union of the EU, we would perhaps be able to strike our own deals with other countries, in particular the United States, which is our biggest single trading partner apart from the 27 countries of the EU.