India Steel Market Watch
November 5: The US Department of Commerce slapped preliminary duties on some steel from China as US Steel Corp posted another quarterly loss and cut its outlook for shipments and prices amid what it called excessive imports.
Six American steel-makers, including US Steel, filed three trade complaints earlier this year. They received a preliminary ruling on the first as the Commerce Department established preliminary duties of up to 236% on imports of corrosion-resistant steel from China. The tariff goes into effect immediately and will be set for five years if a final ruling in favour of the duty is made in January.
Pittsburgh-based US Steel reported a net loss of $173 million, or $1.18 a share, as total shipments fell 25% from a year earlier, to 3.9 million tons.
The effect of the sharp drop in volumes was magnified by lower prices. The benchmark hot-rolled coil price in the US stands at $393 a ton, down by more than a third from the start of the year, reflecting pressure on global prices from a flood of Chinese steel exports. In the first nine months of 2015, China exported 71.4 million tons of steel, up 31% from the same period in 2014, though US imports from China declined slightly in that time.