According to the Economic and Steel Market Outlook 2020-2021/Q3 2020 Report from the Economic Committee of the European Steel Association (EUROFER), total EU imports of steel products from third countries decreased by 20 percent year on year in the first quarter this year. In 2019, imports from third countries had decreased by 11 percent, against an increase of 12 percent in 2018. Increasing volatility in 2019 eased considerably after a peak in August. This relatively more stable trend continued up to April of the current year.
In the first four months this year, finished steel product imports fell by 16 percent year on year due to a decrease of 17 percent year on year in imports of flat products and a drop of 11 percent in imports of long products.
EUROFER said that Turkey, Russia, South Korea, India and Ukraine were the largest finished steel import sources for the EU market. These five countries accounted for 70 percent of total EU finished steel imports in the first four months this year.
In this period, imports of finished products from Turkey decreased by 51 percent, imports from China fell by 40 percent and imports from India dropped by 28 percent, while imports from Russia and South Korea increased by eight percent and four percent, respectively, all year on year.
According to the EUROFER report, flat product imports fell by 17 percent and long product imports decreased by 11 percent in the first four months this year.
EUROFER noted that the final safeguards may have undergone some improvements in their design, but the safeguard itself keeps the door open for historically high import volumes. These are imports which under the safeguard are allowed to increase further, even as market conditions deteriorate. The risk is that any growth of EU steel demand in early 2021 would mostly benefit imports due to the unused quota transfer mechanism. The EU market therefore remains at risk of being destabilized by third country imports to the detriment of EU domestic producers.