Flat Rolled Imports by District of Entry and Source Nation, May 2019

Premium members will find reports here on our website that break down the import tonnage through May into the port of entry and country of origin in metric tons. Products analyzed in this way are HRC, CRC, HDG sheet, OMC sheet, CTL plate and coiled plate. This data set is large; therefore, we will make no attempt to provide a commentary. Each reader’s interest will be different and he or she simply needs to select one of the six products, then find the nearest port or ports of entry to see how much came into their locality each month and from where. Monthly data is provided back to January 2017. It is clear from these detailed reports and from our companion reports by region that the change in tonnage entering a particular district in many (or most) cases is completely different from the change in volume at the national level.

Here are some examples to illustrate why this information can be actionable: Total CTL plate imports through May year to date were down by 3.0 percent year over year. Houston was up by 103 percent and Laredo was down by 77 percent. Hot rolled coil was down by 29 percent year over year through May but Detroit, the highest volume district of entry, was down by 45 percent. The discrepancy between the change at the national and local levels is why we think it’s important for both market understanding and negotiating position to know what’s going on in your own backyard.

The table included here is a small part of the detailed analysis of the HRC sheet tonnage. The bar graph shows the tonnage of CTL plate that entered the top 10 districts through May year to date for 2018 and 2019 ranked by 2019 tonnage. These 10 districts accounted for 93.2 percent of the total CTL plate tonnage in 2019 YTD.

The data in these detailed reports is compiled from tariff and trade data published by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. International Trade Commission. Our national level import reports are sourced from U.S. Department of Commerce, Enforcement and Compliance, aka the Steel Import Monitoring System. In the development of these reports by district and source country, we have discovered that the SIMA data for HRC and CRC contains some high-alloy steels, such as stainless and tool steel, that have been misclassified at the ports. These alloy steels are not included in our detailed reports, which results in a small discrepancy between the two data sets, for CRC in particular and for HRC to a lesser degree.