BEIJING/SINGAPORE (Reuters)
-U.S. President Joe Biden's push to triple tariffs on Chinese steel imports
strikes a mostly symbolic blow on an industry facing bigger concerns over
faltering local demand and threats of even stronger blowback against China's
surging exports.
Steel consumption in the
world's second-largest economy is poised to shrink again this year as a protracted
property crisis has yet to find bottom and as infrastructure demand growth
slows after 12 indebted regions were ordered to halt certain projects.
The state-backed China Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute
(MPI) forecasts a 1.7% drop in China's steel demand this year, following a 3.3%
decline in 2023.
While China's steel exports
last year climbed more than a third to their highest since 2016 at 90.26
million metric tons, about 9% of its total crude steel output, just 598,000 tons
of the shipments went to the United States. That was down 8.2% from volumes
shipped to the U.S. the previous year and less than 1% of total Chinese steel
exports worth $85 billion in 2023.
China, the world's biggest
producer and exporter of steel, is just the seventh-largest shipper of steel to
the U.S., softening the blow of Biden's proposal to raise to 25% the tariffs
imposed by his predecessor Donald Trump on certain steel and aluminium
products.
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