Steel Products Prices North America
November 6, 2015
Flat, Long, and Semi-Finished Steel Imports Analysis
Written by Peter Wright
License data for October was updated on November 3rd through the Steel Import Monitoring System of the US Commerce Department. At SMU we perform a detailed analysis of this data, an explanation of our methodology is given at the end of this write up.
Total rolled product licensed imports in the single month of October were 2,269,273 short tons up by 8.7 percent from the preliminary September volume. We prefer not to dwell on single months results because of the extreme variability that can occur in individual products. In the comments below we use three month moving averages (3MMA) to get a more representative picture. The 3MMA through October was 2,249,408 tons, down by 3.5 percent from September. On the same basis flat rolled was down by 6.8 percent, long products up by 7.6 percent and pipe and tube down by 7.2 percent.
