U.S. Steel Corp. will temporarily shut down three blast furnaces

Release time：Jun 22, 2019 From：admin

Bloomberg, June 19 (Reuters) - Since 2018, the U.S. government has been promoting the huge contribution of the steel and aluminium tariff policy launched in March last year to the revival of the domestic steel industry.

However, there have been different industry trends in the United States recently. On Tuesday, U.S. Steel Corp., one of the beneficiaries of import tariff policy, announced that it would temporarily shut down two blast furnaces in the United States and one in Europe until "the market environment has improved".

The decision came at a time when steel prices in the United States continued to fall because of widespread concern that new capacity emerging in the next few years could lead to oversupply. Following the implementation of the new tariff policy on steel and aluminium in the United States, several U.S. steel mills have announced plans to expand capacity or restart existing projects, including Nucor Corp., Steel Dynamics Inc., Commercial Metals Co., and U.S. Steel.

"In the United States, last week our B2 BF in Great Lakes went into overhaul and shutdown as planned," Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel said Tuesday. "According to the current market conditions, we expect that B2 BF will remain shut down after completion of maintenance as scheduled. In addition, we expect that the Gary plant under the Group will temporarily shut down a southern blast furnace.

To be sure, tariffs do provide an adrenaline-like momentum for the U.S. steel industry. Nucor Steel, the largest U.S. steelmaker, and U.S. Steel both achieved considerable profit growth in 2018. But in general, investors have reason to feel deceived. The S&P Supercomposite Steel Index, which covers 13 U.S. steelmakers, has fallen 29% in the past year. Among them, U.S. steelmakers'stock prices have fallen by as much as 60%, ranking first among the 13 sample companies.