Steel Products Prices North America
January 3, 2015
Why Steel Imports Surged During 2014: A Service Center Opinion
Written by John Packard
After Steel Market Update (SMU) produced our 11 month analysis of flat rolled steel imports into the United States, we received a number of comments about reality versus the perception behind the numbers. Calendar year 2014 should go down in history as the second largest number of foreign steel tonnage shipped to the U.S. by foreign producers in history. In our recent article we expect 2014 total steel imports to exceed 43 million net tons surpassing 1998’s 42.5 million tons. As a side note, the year with the most flat rolled imports was 1998 at 29.6 million net tons (AISI).
We received the following note from a steel service center executive associated with one of the major national service center chains in North America. In the note the author puts into perspective what conditions created the surge in imports and then forecasts what will happen during the first six months 2015:
