After the US domestic flat rolled market hit a lull a week ago, rumblings of quiet price cuts have grown more pronounced, putting an end to the market's one-month stable price trend. Purchasing activity has been sluggish as a result of too much capacity, bulging buyer inventories, and as slew of arriving imports. The deepest price cuts have been mostly contained to downstream products such as cold rolled coil (CRC)--CRC spot prices are down $1.00 cwt. ($22/mt or $20/nt) on the high end to $38.00-$39.00 cwt. ($838-$860/mt or $760-$780/nt) ex-Midwest mill--and coated products as mills try to keep hot rolled coil (HRC) spot prices level. For the time being, HRC spots are stable from last week at $33.00-$35.00 cwt. ($728-$772/mt or $660-$700/nt) ex-Midwest mill, but with negotiating power still in buyers' favor, the higher end of the range will likely begin to deteriorate sooner rather than later.
As mentioned, there has been a noticeable jump in arriving HRC imports so far in April. According to data from the US Department of Commerce's Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis (SIMA) data, 191,525 mt (license data) arrived as of April 17 due to 56,241 mt from Korea, 26,046 mt from Russia and over 20,000 mt each from Canada, Japan and the Netherlands. Some of the Russian HRC, in particular, is coming in unsold, but even traders' unsold positions aren't being sold for too much of a discount from US domestic prices: $32.00-$34.00 cwt. ($705-$750/mt or $640-$680/nt) ex-dock.
| Cwt. | Metric Ton (mt) | Net ton (nt) | Change from last week | |
| US domestic | ||||
| HRC | $33.00-$35.00 | $728-$772 | $660-$700 | neutral |
| CRC | $38.00-$39.00 | $838-$860 | $760-$780 | ↓$1.00 cwt. on high end |
| China* | ||||
| CRC | $39.50-$40.50 | $871-$893 | $790-$810 | neutral |
| Mexico** | ||||
| HRC | $33.00-$34.00 | $728-$750 | $660-$680 | neutral |
| CRC | $38.50-$39.50 | $849-$871 | $770-$790 | neutral |
| Russia* | ||||
| HRC | $32.00-$33.00 | $705-$728 | $640-$660 | neutral |
**DDP loaded truck delivered into Houston