Chennai: As in the case of the FTA with the UK, the US is likely to relax the sweeping 25 per cent tariff on steel, aluminium, and their derivatives as well as those on automobiles and auto parts for India under the Bilateral Trade Agreement.“Under the trade deal with the UK, the US has relaxed the Section 232 tariffs on steel, aluminium and automobiles. We are confident that our FTA too will do away with the 25 per cent tariffs,” said Saikat Dutta, director, policy, Engineering Export Promotion Council.Under the deal, the first 100,000 vehicles exported by the UK each year to the US are subject to the reciprocal rate of 10 per cent and any additional vehicles each year are subject to 25 per cent rates.According to the UK government, the tariffs on steel and aluminium too have been brought down from 25 per cent to zero. However, steel scrap will be excluded from this. This deal creates a new trading union for steel and aluminium, it had said.“It is possible that the US will also provide the facility to India under the BTA,” said Ajay Srivastava, founder, GTRI.The steel importers from the US have gone slow on new orders in the hope of exclusion under the BTA. The fall in new orders is likely to reflect in the export data of May.“However, the shipments which had an invoice date prior to March 12 were allowed into the US without tariffs and the industry had pushed large volumes of shipments to escape the tariffs. This saw a surge in exports in the month of April. However, this is an aberration,” said Dutta.As per the data of EEPC, the iron and steel exports to the US in April went up by 343 per cent from $24.6 million to $109 million. The exports of iron and steel products too were up by 11 per cent to $258 million against $231 million in the same month last year. The overall exports of iron and steel in April was up by a marginal 1 per cent and products of iron and steel by 6 per cent.