Steel Products Prices North America
December 9, 2014
Final October Imports at Record Levels, Up 43% Year Over Year
Written by Brett Linton
Total October steel imports were recently finalized by the US Department of Commerce at 4,441,271 net tons (4,029,058 metric tons), surpassing the previous high of 4,417,811 tons in August 1998. October had been on pace to be a high tonnage month, but previous preliminary data figures were a few thousand tons shy of breaking the 16 year record (one reason why we try to represent license data figures as a way of watching trends but there is some “slop” in the numbers which can go in either direction).
Based on license data (remember our “slop” comment above) November steel imports appear will be close to 4.0 million net tons. This is a little higher than the 3.7-3.8 million tons we had been projecting over the past couple of weeks.
