Steel Products Prices North America

Vietnamese Exports of Cold Rolled & Coated to USA: An Exercise…

June 21, 2018

On Tuesday evening, the U.S. Department of Commerce releases the import licenses collected by product and by country through that date. This week, the licenses were reported for the first 19 days of June 2018.

After looking at the data (see story about June import trend in tonight’s issue of SMU), the head of commercial for a domestic steel mill texted SMU, “BTW, did u see Vietnam coated licenses? Giant levels. Amazing.”

So, Brett Linton in our office did some research on what the cold rolled and coated (galvanized and other metallic, most of which is Galvalume) imports the U.S. has been receiving and is projected to receive during the month of June (and for the first five months 2018). To make it interesting, we had him take a look at what impact a quota, similar to South Korea’s, would have on Vietnam’s numbers.

US Vietnam Imports 6 20 18

As you can see, we are showing the trend for the month of June to be 31,000 net tons of cold rolled, 103,000 net tons of galvanized and 15,000 net tons of Galvalume.

If Vietnam was to be forced to accept a quota (which we believe is what President Trump wants), their quota would already be exhausted on galvanized and Galvalume steels.