Foreign vs. Domestic Hot Rolled Steel Price Comparison

This week’s SMU comparison of foreign and domestic hot rolled prices shows that U.S prices continue to remain advantageous over foreign imports, even further so than two weeks ago, according to SMU and CRU indices. The price gap between domestic HRC compared to German and Italian products has widened significantly over the past few weeks, while the East/Southeast Asian price spread remains low, hovering in a $20 per ton range.

The following calculation is used by Steel Market Update to identify the theoretical spread between foreign hot rolled steel prices (delivered to U.S. ports) and domestic hot rolled coil prices (FOB domestic mills). We want our readers to be aware that this is only a “theoretical” calculation as freight costs, trader margin and other costs can fluctuate, ultimately influencing the true market spread. We are comparing the SMU U.S. hot rolled weekly index to CRU hot rolled weekly indices for Germany, Italy and the Far East (East and Southeast Asian port).