US exempts Austrian steelmaker's tariffs

VIENNA, Oct 09 (Reuters): The United States has granted more than half of the exemptions to its steel import tariffs that Austrian steelmaker Voestalpine and its customers applied for, the company said on Tuesday.

Washington in May announced tariffs of 25 per cent on steel imports and 10 per cent on aluminium from the European Union, Canada and Mexico.

Of the 4,300 product exemptions that the company and its customers applied for, 2,640 have received a response from the US administration, Voestalpine said. Of those, roughly 2,360 were granted and 280 turned down, it added.

"The economic risk for Voestalpine related to these tariffs has thus reduced ... significantly," the company said in a statement.

Voestalpine repeated its assessment in June that only up to around 3.0 per cent of its revenue could have been affected by the tariffs. It said at the time that the associated economic risk was "very manageable".

"We are optimistic that we will receive mainly positive responses to the remaining applications," Voestalpine added on Tuesday.

Voestalpine supplies sectors including the auto, rail and energy industries with specialty steel products but also produces steel strip. When asked which products had received exemptions, a spokeswoman said they were "across the board" and involved all four of the company's divisions.