US steel imports decrease in October

US steel imports decrease in October

The US government released preliminary steel import figures for October 2003. Based on this data, it is seen that US imports dropped by 8.5% from the previous month's figures. A total of 1.5 million mts of steel was imported during October into the US. This tonnage includes 1.3 million mts of finished steel with a 6.7% decrease. As per the 2003 year-to-date results, 17.44 million mts of steel and 13.89 million mts of finished steel was imported into the country with a decrease of 28.9% and 21.5% respectively, over the same period of last year. From September to October, the change in steel imports is due to decrease seen in wire rods, blooms, billets, slabs and hot rolled sheets, basically from Turkey, Korea and Russia. The Jan-Sep 2003 final figures revealed that US imported 16 million mts of steel which was decreased by 5.8 million mts from the 21.8 million mts recorded in the same period last year. The largest commodity decreases were in blooms, billets, slabs, wire rods and hot rolled sheets. Furthermore, the largest country decreases were in Brazil, Russia, Japan and Canada. According to the data, Turkey has exported 48'080 mts of finished steel to the US in October. This quantity was 50% lower compared to the same period last year. Major import quantities of finished steel into US appear to be coming from Canada, EU, Mexico, Japan and Korea.