Steel Products Prices North America
July 10, 2014
Imports Analysis: Semi-Finished, Flat Rolled & OCTG at High Numbers
Written by John Packard
It is still too early in the month of July to provide a trend analysis of where we think import numbers will fall by the end of the month. The first eight days (with three being holidays) of the month saw a relatively large number of license applications but we will wait until next Tuesday before we provide a projection based on the license data for the month of July.
The U.S. Department of Commerce released Final Census Data for the month of May which was the largest month for imports in many years exceeding 4 million net tons. The biggest culprit was the domestic mills themselves as they imported over 1 million tons of semi-finished (most being slabs). Slightly more than 25 percent of total imports can be traced to steel mills and slabs. The domestic mills import more than slabs, however. Mills like USS/Posco (UPI) and Steelscape import large amounts of hot band so the final mill tally is much greater than 25 percent of the total imports.
