Steel Products Prices North America

April Steel Imports Trending at 3.3 Million Tons

April 27, 2015

Steel Market Update reviews the weekly steel import license data as reported by the US Department of Commerce. License data can be quite volatile and we only use the reports as a way of evaluating any changes in tonnage or product trends. The closer we get to the end of the month the better the data becomes. However, using last month as an example, the Preliminary Census Data came in 200,000 tons less than what the license data was suggesting, even after the month had ended.

Based on data released this afternoon, total steel imports are trending toward a 3.3 million net ton month. SMU believes the final number could range anywhere from 3.1 million to 3.4 million tons.

We thought you might be interested in seeing what the license data was like based on the 4th week of the months of December, January, February, March and April. The number shown is the average daily tonnage rate. As you can see, April is the lowest month seen since December and the license numbers are pointing toward a smaller number of tons will be imported in April than March.

In the table below we provide another way of looking at imports based on the data that we have available today. Shown are the 12 month and 3 month moving averages, the February Final Census numbers (no changes will be made to these numbers), March Preliminary Census Data (minor changes can occur) and April License Data Trend Analysis that we do.