In the first five months of the current year, total EU exports of steel products to third countries fell by a very modest one percent year on year. In the given period, total finished product exports fell by one percent year on year as a result of a four percent increase in flat product exports and a nine percent drop in long product exports.
EUROFER stated that, while the year-to-date EU export volume did not register much of a change compared with 2017, a similar observation can be made with regard to the main destinations. Over the first five months of this year, Turkey, the United States (US) and Switzerland remained the major export destinations for EU flat and long product exports, followed by China and Algeria.
As stated in the report by EUROFER, the increase in imports combined with the slight drop in exports resulted in a marked increase in the EU’s net trade deficit over the first five months of 2018. The trade deficit amounted to 7.9 million mt over this period, which would represent an annualized level of 19 million mt over the whole year of 2018. This compares to a trade deficit of 9.9 million mt in 2017. The almost doubling of the net trade deficit suggests that speculative buying behavior in advance of the Section 232 tariffs impositions and the safeguard response from the European Commission have already started to impact steel trade conditions for all steel product groups.