Finally the preliminary steel import numbers for August are here. They're down 2.4% from July. And whether you care or not, you are going to see who we get our steel from:
10 thoughts on “Raw data: Top steel importers to the United States”
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The UK has a steel industry? …. Not UK owned anyway.
It says "steel products" but does not include finished manufactured goods. When I dig into the charts, I find things like rails and pipes are included, but e.g. cars are not. I suspect that the tonnage of steel imported in the form of finished manufactured goods exceeds by a couple of orders of magnitude the tonnage covered by this chart.
"Preliminary U.S. Imports for Consumption of Steel Products" are
Flat Products, Long Products, Pipe and Tube Products, Semi-finished Products:
That is an awfully big "other" category. Is no individual country within "other" really not bigger than say France or Finnland?
The steel contained in imported cars, and other products, do not directly compete with the US steel industry, but does directly compete with the domestic auto industry.
I used to know a whole lot about the US steel industry 15-20 years ago, and did a few financing deals and visited a steel mill or 2.
This guy seems to have some thoughts on the US steel industry. I don't follow him, and wouldn't defend the article, but in my 5 minute review, he certainly is not MAGA Trumper:
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-the-us-steel-industry-is-dying
Thanks for the link.
Now what's going on with aluminum?
There is no particular reason why the steel in imported manufactured goods could not come from the US. Given the very low cost of bulk shipping, if US steel were price competitive it could easily be shipped to e.g. Korea to be made into Hyundais. At least in principle, steel imported as manufactured goods DOES compete directly with the US steel industry.
That's a _lot_ of 'other'.
I’m more interested in the numbers for Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice. There’s a lot of disagreement on what they will be.
Canada's position is misleading since Canada imports more US steel (at least when measured by dollars) than they export to the US. It's a fully integrated market where you buy from the closest mill producing what you want regardless of which side of the border the mill is on.