Steel Products Prices North America
May 6, 2016
Flat, Long, and Semi-Finished Imports through April 2016
Written by Peter Wright
Licensed data for April was reported by the Steel Import Monitoring System of the US Commerce Department on May 3rd. An explanation of the methodology that we at SMU use to analyze the trade data is given at the end of this piece.
Total rolled product licensed imports in the single month of April were 1,969,561 short tons which was almost exactly the same as the final March tonnage. Imports of semi-finished declined from 486,697 in March to 348,321 tons in April. 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 only three month moving averages (3MMA) to get a more representative picture. The 3MMA of semi-finished through April was 334,148 tons, down by 5.8 percent from March. On this basis the volume of all rolled products was down by 2.8 percent, flat rolled was down by 5.1 percent of which sheet products were down by 3.4 percent. Long products were up by 1.9 percent and pipe and tube down by 2.1 percent.
