Posted on 10 Jun 2025
China's finished steel exports increased by 8.9% on year to total 48.47 million tonnes over January-May, a record high, according to the latest statistics from the country's General Administration of Customs (GACC) on June 9.
For May alone, the country's steel exports increased by 9.8% on year to 10.58 million tonnes, the highest for any month since October 2024, Mysteel Global observed.
Chinese steel suppliers continued to actively front-load shipments for fear of worsening trade friction against China-origin steel products, according to market sources, which kept the export volume elevated.
China's steel shipments abroad in May were mainly fulfilling orders signed one-to-two months earlier, Mysteel Global notes. March is usually a strong month for domestic steel sales but this year, the volume was well below market expectations and pointed to a rather slow steel-demand recovery instead. This is where exports helped.
On one hand, China produced 92.8 million tonnes of crude steel in March, higher by 4.6% on year, data from the country's National Bureau of Statistics showed. On the other however, domestic demand lagged, with daily combined trading volume of construction steel among the 237 trading houses under Mysteel's regular tracking averaging 107,738 tonnes/day in March, down by 11.5% on year.
This mismatch between supply and demand in China's domestic steel market prompted Chinese mills and traders to seize overseas trading opportunities, market watchers said. Arguably, however, a more powerful incentive was U.S. President Donald Trump's blitz on tariffs, his administration having warned it would impose import duties of 25% on steel and aluminum imported from most countries from March 12.
Trump's announcement had prompted Chinese exporters to rush to place tonnage abroad lest other countries impose similar duties to protect domestic suppliers. Ironically, steel buyers in the United States were also keen importers of Chinese steel at this time.
During the first four months of this year, the U.S. imported 157,789 tonnes of finished steel products from China, a staggering 25% year-on-year increase, according to data released on June 5 by the U.S. Census Bureau under the Department of Commerce (DoC), as Mysteel Global reported.
Meanwhile, during this year's first five months, China imported 2.55 million tonnes of steel products, falling by 16.1% from the same period last year, the GACC data showed.
Source:Mysteel Global
