During the past 12 months, the international steel community has been highly critical of those naughty Chinese who´ve been “flooding” the market with their “cheap” steel. Chinese steelmakers have been demonised for “dumping” their product wherever it suits them. Part of the implication is that the steel is of inferior quality and, presumably therefore, bridges and buildings will fall down. Of course, it´s ironic that buyers would be so offended by a product being offered at a lower price. Moreso when, if the market is indeed awash with the product, a buyer would thus be better placed to negotiate an even lower price. However, supply and demand logic doesn´t suit everybody, and certainly not Donald Trump who revels in portraying China as the enemy. He is not alone, however. An increasing number of countries have jumped on the tariff bandwagon in an effort to stem the incoming tide of Chinese steel. According to data from Platts and the China Iron & Steel Association, China saw about 29 major steel trade cases

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filed against it between early 2024 and February 2025. This is far above the 15 cases filed during the entire three-year period of 2020-2023. More recently, between January and February 2025, Vietnam, South Korea, Colombia, the EU and Malaysia all imposed anti-dumping duties on certain Chinese steel products. Protectionism, it seems, is very much in vogue. Whenever you feel your local market is under threat from Chinese imports, just put on a tariff or launch an action (spurious or otherwise) against the product and let the issue get bogged down in paperwork for a few years. The facts of the matter are that China’s exports of semifinished and finished steel in 2024 hit an all-time high of 117 million metric tonnes (Mm/t), a 25.1%  increase on the year earlier, Chinese customs data shows. Clearly, the property market slowdown in China over the past four years has eroded domestic demand for steel and Chinese steelmakers have sought to offload their excess product on the open market. Nothing illegal about that, per se. Nevertheless, offence has been taken and the competing nations are fighting back. Depending on who you talk to, growing trade barriers against Chinese steel are expected to start impacting exports towards late 2025 with the pressure seen rising in 2026. “China’s steel exports are almost certainly going to fall in 2025, given all these trade conflicts….but the exports could still be in the range of 100 Mm/t in 2025, as the decline will be a gradual process,” one China-based trader told Platts. However, Lawrence Zhang, principal consultant for the steel and raw materials market at Wood Mackenzie, told Reuters that market practicalities will take over. “The low cost of Chinese steel, and the rising demand from South-East Asia, MENA (Middle East and North Africa) and India will pose upside risks for China’s steel exports in 2025 and beyond,” he said.

On the darker side, there is another factor in play. The new US steel tariffs are set to disrupt a multi-billion dollar supply chain moving steel from China to the United States via third countries. It is well known that, since trade barriers in 2016 and 2018 priced most Chinese steel out of the United.States´ market, mills in countries with relatively freer access have bought cheap Chinese steel and on-sold it to the US after various degrees of processing. It is referred to as trans-shipping. While the exact definition and size of the trans-shipment market is murky, Reuters estimates it at around 8.6 Mm/t, or 8% of China’s total steel exports last year. In its justification for imposing new tariffs, the White House said cheap Chinese steel was displacing production in other countries into the United States or was being trans-shipped into the country. What is clear is that major steel exporters to the US such as Mexico, Vietnam and Brazil have imported growing quantities of Chinese steel. Last year, US steel imports from Vietnam surged 143.4% year-on-year. Vietnam topped others to account for 11.5% of China’s total steel exports, data from Chinese customs and the American Iron and Steel Institute showed. This trade will be hampered when Donald Trump´s 25% steel duty comes into force on March 12. “The mounting trade frictions will add pressure on China’s steel exports,” state-backed research house China Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute said in a note in February. One Chinese steel trader told Reuters that orders for delivery around the normally busy first quarter were “pitifully low” even before Trump signed the tariffs into law. “The export orders that we have received for shipments in March and April have fallen by 20-30% from the same period in 2024,” the trader said on condition of anonymity as they are not authorised to speak to media.

In a further example of how trade barriers can alter the flow of products, China has lost its ranking as the leading supplier of finished steel to India. Last year, Indian steel producers lobbied the Indian Government on the perceived threat posed by cheap Chinese steel. As a result, in the period April 2024 to January 2025, South Korea rose above China as the principal trading partner. Steel imports from South Korea rose 11.7% to 2.44 Mm/t in the 10-month period, while inflows from China only reached 2.31 Mm/t.