Morocco's Third Welded-Pipe Safeguard: A Nine-Year Measure Now on a Timetable to Zero

Morocco's Ministry of Industry and Trade has concluded its second sunset review of the safeguard on welded iron and steel tube and pipe, extending the measure for a further three years. The additional ad valorem duty will run at 19% from 6 November 2026, fall to 18% a year later and to 17% in the final year to 5 November 2029, after which it disappears.

The headline number matters less than the shape of the schedule. At the changeover the effective additional duty actually falls — from 20% in the expiring year to 19% in the first year of the extension — and the measure now has a published end date. For importers and exporters alike, the useful reading is not "more protection" but "protection with a visible expiry".

What was decided, and by whom

The review was opened by public notice DDC/09/2026, effective 17 June 2026, following a request filed on 30 April 2026 by the Moroccan association of steel tube and profile manufacturers on behalf of the domestic welded-pipe industry. The results notice, DDC/12/2026, is dated 26 October 2026 and was reported in the trade press around 4 November.

The three-year glide path, as reported, is:

That is a nine-year measure in total: first imposed on 6 November 2020 at 25%, cut by one point a year to 22% at the 2023 renewal, and now to 19%. Each three-year cycle has stepped the opening rate down by three percentage points while keeping the one-point annual glide path intact — a consistently applied phase-out design rather than a series of ad hoc renewals.

Scope: 18 tariff lines, welded only

The measure covers welded iron or steel tubes and pipes of circular, square or rectangular cross-section, including conical and pyramidal forms, across 18 Moroccan customs lines in heading 7306. That heading is the welded (including ERW and LSAW) family — galvanised and black line pipe, scaffold tube, structural hollow sections — and does not reach seamless tube (7304) or OCTG-specific lines. The presence of 7306.30 (circular), 7306.61/7306.69 (non-circular) and 7306.90 lines maps directly onto the cross-section description in the notice.

One procedural detail deserves attention: the original investigation used 12 tariff lines, but since the 1 January 2022 edition of the Moroccan customs tariff the goods sit under the current 18. The 2026 review therefore had to restate the product scope onto the 2022 nomenclature. Suppliers and customs brokers working from pre-2022 code lists should update their references.

The injury reasoning: recovery deemed real but not yet durable

The ministry's stated rationale, as reported, rests on three findings:

• Imports rose over 2022–2025, in both absolute and relative terms — that is, faster than the domestic market grew.
• Domestic indicators improved, but too recently and too fragilely to demonstrate a lasting recovery — in effect, the "likelihood of recurrence of serious injury" test was met.
• External risk remains: expanding global steel capacity and rising protectionism in third markets could divert volumes to Morocco if the measure lapsed.

The ministry also confirmed that local producers are undertaking adjustments to improve competitiveness — a standard element in safeguard extensions, where authorities must show the industry is adjusting rather than merely sheltering.

Readers should note that these are paraphrases of the French notice, and the underlying quantitative indicators — import volumes, market share, capacity utilisation, price underselling — were not visible in the reporting reviewed. The qualitative conclusion is well corroborated; the numbers behind it are not.

The developing-country exemption: two irreconcilable lists

This is the one point where the available reporting genuinely conflicts, and it matters commercially.

• One trade publication reports that exemptions for developing WTO members "listed in the notice" include India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Brazil, with the ministry reserving the right to revise the list on import data and to bring suppliers exceeding the 3% de minimis threshold into scope.
• Another reports that the exempt developing members include Taiwan and China.

The two lists do not overlap at all. They cannot both be correct as stated. Circumstantial evidence favours the first: Chinese welded-pipe exports to Morocco are reported at roughly 12,000 t in 2025 and about 3,600 t in January–April 2026, which makes China a substantial supplier and therefore an implausible candidate for blanket exemption — unless Chinese volumes are being handled through a different channel or classification.

Analytical conclusion: the definitive exemption annex to DDC/12/2026 should be treated as the only reliable source until read directly. Any supplier planning 2027 volumes on the assumption of exemption is taking an unnecessary risk. The standard WTO safeguard architecture here is a 3% individual de minimis share; the aggregate small-supplier condition (typically 9%) is not confirmed in the available reports.

Why this matters beyond the tonnage

Morocco's welded-pipe market is small in global terms, and a 12 kt annual flow from China is trivial against Chinese export totals. Two things make the case more interesting than its size suggests.

First, the sequencing of Moroccan trade policy. Morocco has been an active user of safeguards and anti-dumping actions across steel products in this period, and the pipe measure sits inside a broader programme of import management aimed at protecting a domestic downstream fabricating sector that is being built out alongside large infrastructure and industrial projects. Rabat's approach has been gradualist: rather than abrupt cliffs, it uses declining tariff paths that give domestic producers time to adjust and give importers a predictable cost curve.

Second, the diversion logic cuts both ways. The ministry's own reasoning cites increased protection in third markets as a reason to keep the measure. That same logic implies that as the Moroccan duty steps down — and especially after November 2029 — Morocco becomes a relatively more attractive destination for displaced welded-pipe volumes. The scheduled exit is therefore not merely a domestic policy choice; it is a bet that Moroccan producers will be competitive enough by 2029 to absorb that pressure without a further renewal.

What to watch

• The exemption annex. Whether the named countries survive in the final text, and whether any supplier crosses the 3% threshold in 2026–27 data, prompting a mid-term scope revision. The notice explicitly leaves that door open.
• Legal formalisation. In 2023 the extension was given effect by a joint decree (arrêté conjoint) published in the Bulletin Officiel. A comparable instrument should be expected for the 2026 extension; until it appears, the notice is the operative document but the tariff schedule's legal basis rests on the decree.
• The 2029 decision point. Whether a third sunset review is launched before November 2029, or whether the measure lapses on schedule. The consistent three-point step-down at each renewal suggests the authorities are managing an exit rather than planning permanence — but three renewals in nine years is also a record of habit.

Bottom line

For importers, the practical effect is a small reduction in duty cost from November 2026 and a planning horizon that finally includes a zero-tariff date. For Moroccan producers, it is three more years of declining protection — enough time to finish the competitiveness adjustments the ministry says are under way, but not enough to defer them. The most consequential detail in the announcement is not the 19% but the 0%.

Figures on the duty schedule, tariff lines and the review timeline are as reported in trade press coverage of the ministry's notice; the author was unable to access the full text of DDC/12/2026 directly, and the developing-country exemption list remains disputed between sources.