The Productivity Commission is due to release an interim report in September into the impact of imported fabricated steel flooding the Australian market.
The Productivity Commission has undertaken an Inquiry to consider Safeguard measures including a tariff rate quota to protect local industry.
The inquiry has received 59 non-confidential and 21 confidential submissions, and concluded a round of public hearings in May 2026.
The Australian Steel Institute (ASI) said a new report from the OECD has confirmed what Australian steel fabricators have been experiencing for years: a worsening global glut of heavily subsidised steel is distorting markets, destroying competition and threatening the viability of market-based producers worldwide.
The OECD Steel Outlook 2026, which was released earlier this month, paints a stark picture of the global steel industry.
Global excess steel-making capacity is projected to rise from 640 million tonnes in 2025 to 745 million tonnes by 2028 — a figure that would exceed the combined annual steel production of all OECD member countries by 319 million tonnes.
Over the same period, demand is forecast to grow by just 34 million tonnes, while planned new capacity additions reach up to 139 million tonnes.
The OECD identifies the root cause clearly: escalating government subsidies in major non-OECD steel-producing economies, with the median producer in some countries receiving up to 15 times more support relative to their total assets than producers in market-based economies — up from 10 times in 2023.
The result is a flood of artificially priced steel into open markets, with record export volumes reaching 131 million tonnes in China alone in 2025.
The OECD also warns that the crisis is now threatening the green steel transition, with around one-fifth of planned low-carbon steelmaking projects worldwide suspended due to unfavourable market conditions and unfair competition.
ASI chief executive Mark Cain said the OECD report was unambiguous in its findings.
“The OECD has now confirmed, in the clearest possible terms, that subsidised overcapacity is distorting global steel markets and causing real injury to market-based producers,” he said.
“Australian fabricators have been living this reality for years. The Productivity Commission inquiry is our opportunity to respond with the kind of targeted, proportionate measures the OECD itself says is justified.”
The ASI lodged its application for Safeguard measures with the Australian Government in late 2025, prompting the Productivity Commission inquiry now underway.
Brezac Constructions, drawing on more than 35 years of operational experience, lodged a supplementary submission urging the commission to maintain focus on the direct relationship between the surge in imports and injury to the domestic fabrication industry.