US hot rolled imports down 54% since January 2015 peak

by Jessica Wagner on April 11, 2016

in Data

The US Department of Commerce published the preliminary anti-dumping decision on hot rolled steel imports on March 15th. Now that the February import data has been published, we can look at the impact of the trade case on import volumes, as we did in an earlier post for cold rolled imports.

Since the last peak in January 2015, US hot rolled (sheet, coil, strip) imports from all countries have declined 54% from 777,000 short tons to 358,000 tons in February 2016. Imports from the countries under investigation (Australia, Brazil, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Turkey, the United Kingdom) declined 67% from 533,000 tons to 178,000 tons, while imports from non-investigated countries dropped 26% to 181,000 tons.

In brief, imports from investigated countries are down 356,000 tons and imports from other countries are down 63,000 tons. We’ll continue to monitor the impact of trade cases on imports as decisions are reported.