U.S. steel production jumps 1.9% year over year
U.S. steel production for the week ending Feb. 1, 2020, reached 1.91 million tons, up 1.9% from production during the same week in 2019, according to weekly data released by the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI).
Production for the week ending Feb. 1, 2020, came in at a capacity utilization rate of 82.1%.
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Production for the week ending Feb. 1, 2019, totaled 1.88 million tons at a capacity utilization rate of 80.7%.
Meanwhile, the most recent weekly production total was down 0.3% from the previous week ending Jan. 25, 2020.
Adjusted year-to-date production for the year through Feb. 1, 2020 reached 8.77 million net tons, at a capacity utilization rate of 82.3%. That year-to-date total is up 2.4% from the 8.56 million net tons produced during the equivalent period in 2019, during which the capacity utilization rate reached 80.4%.
Last month, President Donald Trump slapped duties on imports of steel and aluminum derivatives, citing rising imports of the products in recent years.
“The Secretary has informed me that domestic steel producers’ capacity utilization has not stabilized for an extended period of time at or above the 80 percent capacity utilization level identified in his report as necessary to remove the threatened impairment of the national security,” Trump said in a White House statement. “Stabilizing at that level is important to provide the industry with a reasonable expectation that market conditions will prevail long enough to justify the investment necessary to ramp up production to a sustainable and profitable level.”
By region, production for the week ending Feb. 1, 2020, reached:
- Northeast: 230,000 net tons
- Great Lakes: 680,000 net tons
- Midwest: 204,000 net tons
- Southern: 714,000 net tons
- Western: 86,000 net tons
Steel prices, meanwhile, continue to inch upward after appearing to bottom out from mid-October to mid-November.
U.S. HRC is up 4.39% over the last month, reaching $595/st as of the start of the week.
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U.S. HDG jumped 1.68% over the last month to $847/st. U.S. CRC rose 2.88% to $786/st.
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