Prices
May 17, 2018
May Imports Trending to 2.3 Million Ton Month
Written by John Packard
Foreign steel imports for May are trending toward a 2.3 million net ton month, based on the data released by the U.S. Department of Commerce earlier this week. April imports were just shy 4.0 million net tons.
In the graphic below, we are tracking the license rate for the first two weeks of a month and then comparing May’s licenses with the average. As you can see,, virtually every individual item is down with the exception of plate products and oil country tubular goods (OCTG).
We are seeing a large drop in imports of semi-finished steels (slabs/billets), which are used by the domestic steel mills. Here is what the trend for the month looks like. (Data shown below is based on extrapolating the license data for the first 15 days of the month and using the daily rate to calculate the trend for the full 31-day month).
