Steel to U.S. continues to increase in first two months this year

U.S. bound steel exports that dropped drastically in the latter half of last year bounced back during the beginning of this year.

According to steel import statistics recently reported by the U.S. Commerce Department, Korean steel exports increased month by month to post a 6.3 percent increase in January and 54.5 percent to 198,000 tons just in February.

This is especially notable as U.S. steel imports were on the decrease, down 2.3 percent in January and 15.8 percent in February. Furthermore, Korea is the only country to show an increase two months in a row among competitive countries.

Even though steel exports were on the rise early this year, the record in February still stayed below the same month of last year's volume, 275,000 tons, down 28.2 percent.

Looking back on last year, steel exports to the U.S. sustained a monthly average of 240,000 tons until June in the wake of import demand increases due to the active U.S. economy. It, however, fell to 120,000 tons in December from July on worries of a U.S. economy slow down and losing competitiveness with China, India and the Ukraine. Consequently, Korean steel exports to the U.S. showed poor results, an 8.9 percent decrease, while the U.S. imported 6.2 percent more over the previous year.