A Look Behind the Numbers
By
Dan Markham on
Sep 24, 2024
The shipment reports from various trade organizations provided some eye-opening year-over-year changes in the last few days, though the full story behind the numbers is hard to discern.
Production of crude steel in August fell 6.5 percent compared with the same month a year earlier. This one is easy to explain. China’s ongoing economic issues drove a 10 percent decrease in crude steel production there, enough to drag the rest of the world down with them.
Domestically, the service center story was even more striking. After a rare (for 2024) bump in steel shipments in July, the MSCI’s totals sunk like stones in August. All four product categories (U.S. and Canadian shipments of steel and aluminum) saw near double-digit declines compared with August 2023. Yikes.
However, the domestic mill story complicates that bleak picture. The U.S. defied the global trend and produced 7 million tons of crude steel in August, a slight increase from the same month in the prior year.