US steel imports in January fell by 10%

The American Iron and Steel Institute reported that the United States imported a total of 3,135,000 tonnes of steel in January 2020, including 1,633,000 tonnes of finished steel (down 9.9% and 33.4%, respectively, compared with January ). 2019. Total and final steel imports increased by 97.7% and 20.4%, respectively, compared to the previous month, December 2019. The market share of finished steel imports in January 2020 was estimated at 17%. The main finished steel products with a significant increase in imports in January compared to December were reinforcing bars (up to 134%), sheets and strips of all other metal coatings (up to 126%), heavy structural forms (up to 98%), wire rods (up to 66%), hot-dip galvanized sheets and strips (up to 56)%), mechanical pipes (up to 43%), drawn wire (up to 33%) and standard pipes (up to 13%).

In January, the largest volumes of finished steel imports from offshore were from South Korea (182,000 tons, up 8% over December), Brazil (88,000 tons, an increase of 579%), Japan (76,000 tons, an increase of 14 %), Spain (55,000 tons, an increase of 79%) and Turkey (51,000 tons, an increase of 606%)