The American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) reported Wednesday that based on the US Department of Commerce's most recent Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis (SIMA) data, total steel permit applications for October fell 3 percent from permit tons recorded in September to 2,192,000 net tons (nt). The overall decline was led by a major decrease in import permits for blooms, billets and slabs which fell from 513,454 metric tons in September to 325,788 metric tons in import permits in October.
Import permit tonnage for finished steel in October was 1,819,000 nt, up 9 percent from the preliminary imports total of 1,662,000 nt in September. While permits of most finished steel products increased in October, import permits for hot rolled sheet (up 50 percent), hot rolled bars (up 30 percent), wire rods (up 15 percent) and mechanical tubing (up 19 percent) registered particularly significant increases.
In October, the largest finished steel import permit applications for offshore countries were for Korea (220,000 nt, up 4 percent from September), Japan (137,000 nt, up 15 percent), China (111,000 nt, up 3 percent), Australia (96,000 nt, up 94 percent) and Germany (71,000 nt, up 12 percent).