‘Blooms, billets and slabs’: US’s biggest steel imports and who supplies thempublished at 10:40 Greenwich Mean Time
Dearbail Jordan
Business reporter
Blooms can be used to make rails, and are one of the US’s biggest steel imports
The biggest exporters of steel to the US can be found to its
north and south – Canada is by far the largest.
In 2024, according to the
American Iron and Steel Institute, Canada exported 6.6 millions tonnes to the US.
That is followed by Brazil at 4.5 million tonnes and then Mexico, which sent 3.5 million tonnes of steel to the US last year.
China is right down the list, in 10th place with 508,000
tonnes, which is perhaps not surprising since Trump imposed
tariffs on Chinese steel during his first term and border taxes were kept in
place by Joe Biden.
And, if you’re really interested in the minutiae, the
institute says the biggest steel products imported into the US in 2024 were
“blooms, billets and slabs”.
That might sound like a cheesy hip-hop combo from
the 90s but they are, in fact, a kind of in-between semi-finished product – so a “bloom” is a piece of steel that can be rectangular in shape and is used to make things like rails.