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    July 6, 2017

    Sheet Imports Increase 15.1 Percent from May to June

    Written by Peter Wright

    The final license data for June was reported by the Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis system of the U.S. Commerce Department on July 5. An explanation of the methodology that we at SMU use to analyze the trade data is given at the end of this piece. All volumes in this analysis are reported in short tons. The total volume of carbon and alloy products was up again in June to the highest level since March 2015. Flat rolled and long products were up, but semis decreased. Total rolled product licensed imports in the single month of June were 2,918,333 tons with a three-month moving average (3MMA) of 2,609,133 tons. We prefer not to dwell on single month results because of the extreme variability that can occur in individual products. In the comments below, we use three-month moving averages to give a more representative picture.

    Figure 1 shows the 3MMA through June licensed tons of semi-finished, flat and long products since January 2004.

    Peter Wright

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