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February preliminary steel imports rose a surprising 5.6% from 2.55 million tons (mt) in January to 2.69 mt, mainly due to an unexpected surge of imported semi-finished steel from Brazil, which we estimate increased nearly 60%.  Finished steel imports actually dropped 0.4% in the month, while semi-finished as a total rose 31.1%.

Meaningful import increases were also seen for wire rod (up 100.1%) and sheet (up 9.5%).  The largest decrease on a tonnage basis was for line pipe, which fell 28.2%, while declines were also seen for heavy structural shapes (down 30.4%), cut-to-length plate (down 16.5%), rebar (down 9.1%) and OCTG (down 5.8%).

Our full report is available to subscribers and provides further thoughts on February imports as well as our outlook for the coming months and implications for steel equities.

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