Steel Products Prices North America

Hot Rolled Imports by Product Detail, Through September 2019

Written by Peter Wright

November 20, 2019

Premium subscribers to Steel Market Update have access to reports on our website that break out the import tonnage into district of entry and source nation for six sheet and plate product categories. This report takes the total national tonnage of hot rolled and breaks it down into product detail.

Using U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) data, SMU has taken the import tonnage of HRC and broken it down into sheet and strip, and whether it was in coil or leveled. Then it separates three gauge ranges, it breaks out how much was P&O, how much was high strength and how much had patterns in relief. The balance is assumed to be commercial hot rolled.

Through September 2019, of the total hot rolled sheet and strip imports into the U.S., only 5.6 percent was strip. By gauge range, the sheet broke down to: 59.3 percent < 0.3mm, 31.9 percent 3 to 4.5 mm, 8.9 percent > 4.5mm thick.

Table 1 is a summary for 2019 through September of hot rolled imports showing gauge ranges and condition and the annual year-to-date total for sheet and strip in metric tons.

Figure 1 breaks the year-to-date hot rolled tonnage down into the four conditions itemized above that are identified in the HTS codes.

Figure 2 does the same thing for three gauge ranges. Year-to-date September, 59.3 percent was < 0.3mm, 31.9 percent was 3 to 4.5 mm and 8.9 percent was >4.5mm thick.

Figure 3 breaks the HR sheet tonnage down into coiled and leveled. Through September year to date, 98 percent was coil and 2 percent was leveled.

Figure 4 breaks the HR strip down into coiled and flat. In this case, 96 percent was flat and 4 percent was coil.

Note: This data was accessed through the USITC database. All steel traded globally is classified by the Harmonized Tariff System (HTS). The HTS code has 10 digits. The first six are globally universal. The last four are used at the discretion of the nations involved in a particular transaction and are the basis of this report. The way the U.S. uses the last four digits to define products may be different from other nations’ product classification.

Peter Wright

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