Global Trade in HRC and CRC through Q3 2016

We believe that to understand the forces acting on the US steel import market it is necessary to examine global trade flows. We present here episode one of our investigation into the global trade of hot rolled coil and cold rolled coil and the US’s position in the big picture. The source of this data is the Iron and Steel Statistics Bureau in the UK. Data is collected from exporters and from importers. Since there are very many fewer exporting nations than importers and since the exporters generally have more advanced reporting systems (unless they lie!) we have only analyzed export based data then reversed it to get the import flow. Data is reported about 10 weeks after a quarter closes. Rather a long delay but it takes time for the ISSB to receive all the data as nations have different reporting speeds. Even with that delay we believe the data is valuable in providing an overall direction and volume of trade flows.

There is a huge inter country flow within the EU which we think is of little relevance to our investigation therefore we have excluded this volume from our analysis. As in most of our reports, what we are after is changes in direction and we will attempt to identify such in these reports. Episode two will be a detailed drill down into where the exports of the major players are headed and where the imports of the major destinations are coming from. We will then report on this data quarterly for our premium members with a focus on changes that are occurring that will put more or less pressure on the US market. From a buyers point of view this will point to more or less opportunity.