US steel imports keep falling in December

US steel imports keep falling in December

The US government released preliminary steel import figures for December 2003. Based on this data, it is seen that US imports decreased by 41.2% from the same month a year ago. US December steel imports fell to 1.53 million mts from 2.61 million mts recorded in December 2002. The steel imports also dropped by 10.7% from the previous month's figures. The significant decrease in steel imports is attributed to more competitive US steel industry, a decline in the value of the US Dollar against certain currencies and the fact that steel prices in US remained lower than in China and most other major markets abroad. This December tonnage includes 1.2 million mts of finished steel with a 5.8% decrease. In 2003, 20.88 million mts of total steel, including 16.51 million mts of finished steel, was imported into the country with a decrease of 29.6% and 23.7% respectively, compared to 2002. From November to December, the change in steel imports is due to decrease seen in blooms, billets and slabs, basically from Brazil and Canada. The Jan-Nov 2003 final figures revealed that US imported 19.4 million mts of steel which decreased by 7.6 million mts from the 27 million mts recorded in the same period last year. The largest commodity decreases were in blooms, billets, slabs, hot rolled sheets and wire rods. In addition, the largest country decreases were in Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Japan and Korea. According to the data, Turkey has exported 38'101 mts of finished steel to the US in December. This quantity was 78.4% lower than the same period last year. Major import quantities of finished steel into US appear to be coming from Canada, EU, Mexico, Korea and Japan.