Steel Products Prices North America

January Foreign Steel Imports Trending Toward 2.8 Million Tons

January 26, 2017

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.

A side note: Egypt is coming on as a supplier. The first time we saw Egyptian HRC tonnage was in September when they exported 6,600 tons to the U.S. This month they have requested another 6,600 tons of licenses for January. Serbia is another country to watch as they shipped 9,000 tons of HRC to the U.S. in September but nothing much since.

Cold rolled and galvanized imports continue to be high. Cold rolled licenses are running at a 250,000 ton pace which is 60,000 tons above the 12 month-moving-average (12MMA).

Galvanized is running about 40,000 tons more than our 12MMA. Brazil and Turkey, along with Canada, are the big exporters of GI to the U.S. Coming on is the United Arab Emirates which is requesting 12,000 tons of GI licenses.

Vietnam requested 54,000 tons of cold rolled and 13,000 tons of galvanized for January arrival despite the circumvention complaint.

Other Metallic (most of which is Galvalume) appears poised to break through the 100,000 ton level which would be the first time since June 2016.

We want to remind our readers that our trend is based on license data and not the final census numbers. Licenses data will provide a feel for the trend but the numbers can sometimes be deceptive as the final numbers can vary by +/- 200,000 tons. Today’s article is based on license data through January 24th.