Flat Rolled Imports by District of Entry and Source Nation through August 2020

Premium members will find reports on our website that break down the import tonnage in 2020 through August into the port of entry and country of origin in metric tons. Products analyzed in this way are HRC, CRC, HDG sheet, OMC sheet, CTL plate and coiled plate. This data set is large; therefore, we will make no attempt to provide a commentary. Each reader’s interest will be different and he or she simply needs to select one of the six products, then find the nearest port or ports of entry to see how much came into their locality each month and from where. Monthly data is provided back to January 2018. It is clear from these reports and from our companion reports by region that the change in tonnage entering a particular district in most cases is different from the change in volume at the national level.

Here are some examples to illustrate why this information can be actionable: HRC imports in total were down by 17 percent year to date through August, but Houston was down by 68 percent and there has been zero tonnage into New Orleans this year. CRC imports were down by 26 percent in total, but Miami was down by 99.9 percent and Houston was down by 84 percent. CTL plate was down by 46 percent, but Detroit was up by 19 percent, Houston was down by 75 percent and New Orleans was down by 71 percent.

The table included here is a small part of the detailed analysis of the hot rolled coil tonnage by district of entry and source nation. The bar graph shows the tonnage of HRC sheet that entered the top 10 districts through August year to date for 2019 and 2020 ranked by 2020 tonnage. These 10 districts accounted for 98.3 percent of the total HRC sheet tonnage in 2020 through August.

The data in these reports is compiled from tariff and trade data published by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. International Trade Commission. Our national level import reports are sourced from U.S. Department of Commerce, Enforcement and Compliance, aka the Steel Import Monitoring System. In the development of these reports by district and source country, we have discovered that the SIMA data for HRC and CRC contains some high-alloy steels such as stainless and tool steel, which have been misclassified at the ports. These alloy steels are not included in our detailed reports, which results in a small discrepancy between the two data sets, for CRC in particular and for HRC to a lesser degree.