June Preliminary Steel Imports Down 11% Over May

Preliminary steel import data was updated late last week by the US Department of Commerce, reporting total June imports at 3,585,781 net tons, down 11.1 percent over May levels and down 4.1 percent over April levels. Compared to the same month one year ago, total June 2014 steel imports are up 45.8 percent or 1,125,697 tons.

A reminder as to how the U.S. Department of Commerce steel import data works. The US DOC releases license data on a weekly basis on Tuesday evening. The request for a licenses does not necessarily mean steel will arrive during that calendar month. Therefore, license data has to be taken with a grain of salt as the final numbers can vary by hundreds of thousands of tons. As the month progresses (in the current case the month of July) we can gather a sense as to where imports should be for the month without having an accurate number available. A few weeks after a month has closed the DOC will release Preliminary Census data (which was what was just released or the month of June). The Preliminary Census data is based on receipts and about one to two weeks later the numbers are confirmed and the Final Census Data is released.