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.
Here’s a graphical version of the SIMA versus actual import data that Jessica posted. It includes only carbon/alloy finished long products. The data is shown in short tons. The SIMA license data comes from this website of the import administration. It’s published every Tuesday evening.
The analysis here is an attempt to exploit the early availability of the license data to estimate the imports for the recently completed month. This is necessary because the actual import data which comes from the Department of Commerce trails the month end by 6 weeks. There is a preliminary DOC estimate published about three weeks after month end, but acceptable license data is usually available before then and provides more detail than the DOC preliminary report. In the case of August for instance, the DOC preliminary estimate is of a 39% decline in all imports from the July level. The license data shown here indicate a 37% decline for this group of finished long products.
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