Business Day 

20 May 2026

By Kabelo Khumalo 

South Africa has imposed the steep­est and broad­est steel tar­iffs — the biggest pro­tec­tion­ist move in two dec­ades — to shield the local industry from cheap imports.

The levies will cre­ate a seis­mic shift in trade rela­tions between South Africa and its trad­ing part­ners, espe­cially China, its biggest one.

The move by the Inter­na­tional Trade Admin­is­tra­tion Com­mis­sion of South Africa (Itac) came after the con­clu­sion of its biggest steel tar­iff review in 20 years, which covered about R67bn worth of imports.

The review finds that South African steel industry stake­hold­ers face numer­ous chal­lenges and that many major eco­nom­ies impose big tar­iffs to pro­tect their domestic indus­tries amid global steel over­ca­pa­city and asso­ci­ated trade diver­sions.

With that in mind, 20% duties were imposed on products such as spades, shovels, tim­ber wedges, hand saws, knives and cut­ting blades, rods and tubes, which were pre­vi­ously free of tar­iffs. Sim­il­arly, screws, bolts, nuts, coach screws, screw hooks, riv­ets, cot­ters, cot­ter pins and wash­ers will now attract 30% duties.

However, rebate pro­vi­sions have been pro­posed that will enable duty-free imports of steel products that are not man­u­fac­tured loc­ally, includ­ing cer­tain rails, wire rods, pipes and heavy struc­tural steel.

Accord­ing to Itac, the rebates are inten­ded to pro­tect down­stream man­u­fac­tur­ers from unne­ces­sary cost increases if local sup­ply does not exist.

“The key ele­ments of the upstream and down­stream pro­du­cers that were reviewed have been final­ised,” said Itac com­mis­sioner Aya­bonga Cawe. “On the rebates, there are a few meas­ures that we have added that were not there before.

These include rebates on cer­tain rail products, coated steel products, and oth­ers.

“In 2005, Itac com­mis­sioned a review that found that the South African steel industry is glob­ally com­pet­it­ive and that imports con­sti­tuted a very small share of demand. Almost all those com­pet­it­ive advant­ages have changed. We are now pro­du­cing less than half of what we pro­duced in 2004.

“The 2005 review took almost all of our duties to zero. What we have done is to recom­mend that the rate of cus­toms duties on products be increased to their respect­ive World Trade Organ­isa­tion bound rates to address import surges, price under­cut­ting and duty cir­cum­ven­tion affect­ing the domestic steel industry,” he said.

Though sev­eral com­pan­ies had asked for steep tar­iff hikes, includ­ing increases of up to 65.55%, the com­mis­sion recom­men­ded that the rate of cus­toms duties on products be increased to their World Trade Organ­isa­tion bound rates to address import surges, price under­cut­ting and duty cir­cum­ven­tion affect­ing the domestic steel industry.

“In some products we have moved from zero to 20%. We are respond­ing to the last two dec­ades and how we back­slided since then.”

South Africa’s steel industry has shed an estim­ated 25,000 jobs since 2009

Sys­tem­atic approach
The Itac review zoomed in on more than 600 codes, from primary steel to stain­less steel.

South Africa’s steel industry has shed an estim­ated 25,000 jobs since 2009. Itac’s report recom­men­ded a hol­istic, integ­rated pack­age of trade meas­ures and non-trade inter­ven­tions to restore the domestic industry’s com­pet­it­ive­ness.

The report notes that the duties will sup­port domestic indus­tri­al­isa­tion, safe­guard employ­ment and ensure access to essen­tial inputs.

At the same time they are inten­ded to cre­ate a stable and pre­dict­able envir­on­ment for invest­ment in the steel value chain.

The announce­ment by ArcelorMit­tal South Africa (Amsa) that it will “dis­con­tinue its long steel busi­ness is a test­a­ment to the real­ity that a more co-ordin­ated and com­pre­hens­ive approach is needed in terms of sup­port to the sec­tor”, the report states.

“This is the second major devel­op­ment in the domestic long steel sec­tor in the last 10 years, fol­low­ing the demise of Evraz Highveld Steel, a heavy sec­tion pro­du­cer.

“The loss of 3,500 dir­ect jobs [at Amsa] and the poten­tial loss of thou­sands of indir­ect jobs can­not be under­es­tim­ated in a coun­try char­ac­ter­ised by high levels of unem­ploy­ment and other socioeco­nomic chal­lenges.”

The loss of sig­ni­fic­ant capa­city will realign the long steel industry in South Africa and will see the increased sig­ni­fic­ance of the steel mini-mills that make some of the products pro­duced by Amsa, such as wire rods, rebar and sec­tions.

Itac is invest­ig­at­ing the pos­sible cre­ation of rebate pro­vi­sions for long products after the loss of capa­city in Amsa’s New­castle Works.

Car­makers’ con­cerns
Vehicle majors BMW and Ford, and industry bod­ies such as Naamsa and the National Asso­ci­ation of Auto­mot­ive Com­pon­ent and Allied Man­u­fac­tur­ers have had reser­va­tions about increas­ing duties on steel products used in the man­u­fac­ture of vehicle com­pon­ents and vehicles to their bound rate.

The reas­ons they have advanced are that it would increase the cost of pro­du­cing vehicles in South Africa and erode cost com­pet­it­ive­ness in the global mar­ket.

The vehicle industry argues that local man­u­fac­tur­ers are facing increas­ing pres­sure from the rapid influx of low-cost vehicle imports from China and India. The imports are often fully built up at much cheaper prices than loc­ally man­u­fac­tured vehicles due to the bene­fits received from gov­ern­ments’ sub­sidies.

“The com­mis­sion took the view that the auto­mot­ive industry and the steel man­u­fac­tur­ers, with sup­port from the gov­ern­ment, should col­lab­or­ate to identify com­mon, high-volume steel product spe­cific­a­tions used across the sec­tor. These products should then be pri­or­it­ised for local pro­duc­tion,” the Itac report states.

“However, in instances where spe­cific grades of steel are not avail­able loc­ally and there are not suf­fi­cient volumes to jus­tify local man­u­fac­tur­ing, tem­por­ary rebate pro­vi­sions should be cre­ated.”

South African author­it­ies have been increas­ingly flex­ing their muscles over trade with the rest of the world. Earlier this year a sub­stan­tial anti-dump­ing tar­iff was imposed on struc­tural steel from key trade part­ner and geo­pol­it­ical ally China as well as Thai­l­and to shield the embattled local industry.

That move came after imports from the Asian super­power and Thai­l­and surged 19-fold in the 2023/24 fin­an­cial year, pla­cing the strug­gling local industry, and most not­ably Amsa, under fur­ther pres­sure.