Nerds of Steel

For those of you who are following US long products imports, December actual import figures have now been published, and are almost 30,000 short tons less than November imports, confirming low import licenses collected for the month. You can view the updated data from my earlier post related to January import licenses.

US long products imports rose in January for the first time since June 2007, based on SIMA US import licenses. As you can see in the spreadsheet below, an increase in rebar and beam import licenses is driving the rebound. Rebar licenses almost tripled in Jan 08 compared to the Dec 07, but are still lower than average 2007 monthly actuals. Beam licenses, on the other hand, have reached their highest levels since December 2006, and February beam imports already look like they will be high based on licenses collected up to February 12th.

US import licenses for long products declined from 240,000 short tons in November ‘07 to 222,000 short tons in December, based on SIMA data.  This is the lowest level of long products import licenses since we began tracking them in April 07 when they were 358,000 short tons.  As you may have seen from earlier posts, SIMA import license data is a good indicator of actual import levels and is published before Department of Commerce  import data is available.  For more information on our collection of SIMA data, see our earlier posts “SIMA US long products import licenses for Sept, Oct, Nov 07″ and “Notes on SIMA licenses”.

EditGrid Spreadsheet by user/nerdsofsteel.

Below is Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis System (SIMA) data comparing US long products import licenses to actual imports for September and October 2007.  November licenses are also listed below, though actuals are not yet available because Department of Commerce actual import data is published 6 weeks after the end of each month.  The license  data is published weekly on Tuesdays on the SIMA website, and as you can see below, license data published about 2 weeks after the end of each month is a pretty good indicator of actual results.  All data below is in short tons.

EditGrid Spreadsheet by user/nerdsofsteel.

License data for the month listed is collected as of the date listed after each month (about 2 weeks after month-end)