January Foreign Steel Imports Trending Toward 2.8 Million Tons

January foreign steel import license data released by the U.S. Department of Commerce earlier this week is suggesting total steel imports will be in line with November and December at approximately 2.8 million net tons.

We continue to see a drop in the level of hot-rolled tons coming into the U.S. market as fewer countries are shipping steel here. This is due to a combination of the impact of the trade cases combined with higher HRC prices around the world. The biggest HRC suppliers for January will be Canada and Mexico. They are the only countries who have requested more than 10,000 tons of licenses.