British manufacturers have warned that a proposal to lift anti-dumping measures on a type of Chinese steel risks a flood of cheap imports and threatens hundreds of jobs in the sector.

The Trade Remedies Authority, an arms-length body set up last year to make recommendations to ministers, has advised revoking existing duties on Chinese high-fatigue performance reinforcement bars, known as “rebar”, used in the UK and Ireland to strengthen concrete.

The TRA said it was no longer in the UK’s economic interests to keep the measures which have been in place since 2016. High demand and an anticipated shortfall of supply given an expected drop in imports from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus were likely to increase domestic prices for rebar. The impact of keeping the duties, therefore, would be “severe”, particularly for the construction sector, the TRA warned.