October Steel Import License Trending Report

The following is our October analysis of the flat rolled and OCTG imports based on license data through October 21, 2014. As we have mentioned many times, license data is not exact and many times can lead one to over or under project final steel import numbers. We have seen license data for the first three weeks of this month at very high levels which leads us to believe imports could very well match the September 4.0 million net tons.

If October comes in at 4.0 million tons it would be the third time the U.S. has seen imports at that level during this calendar year. The license data is currently “suggesting” that imports could exceed 4.0 million tons if licenses continue to pour in at the current rate.