Imports Forecast to Be 3 Million Tons in February

This is the fourth week in February and our third forecast regarding foreign imports into the United States. What Steel Market Update does each week (except the first week of the month) is to review the U.S. Department of Commerce import license data and then, based on the most recent numbers, project import levels by product for the month. Based on import license data through February 25th (today) we believe total imports on all steel products will be just over 3,000,000 net tons.

As you can see by the table below, the 3 million ton forecast is much lower than the 3.5 million tons being projected earlier this month based on license data available during those weeks. As we have warned our readers it is important to realize that license data can be quite volatile and the actual final census numbers can be much different than what was being indicated by the licenses. We encourage you to read an article by David Phelps on the subject which was published by Steel Market Update earlier this year.