Morning Bites

🔗CISA mills daily crude steel production in mid-August was 1.965mnt, down 0.4% from the previous ten days, and 7.1% lower YoY. Per CISA data, local production has declined 5.5% YTD (through 20 August). However, local steel inventories increased 6.7% over the period, and were up 17.0% YoY

Given the ongoing weakness in the global steel market, we believe that Beijing will continue to gradually tighten supply. Although the current five-year plan lacks explicit targets for capacity cuts, it is our view that China might also introduce additional strict supply-control measures, similar to the 2016-17 reform (when >100mnt steelmaking capacity was removed)

For instance, Beijing has recently imposed a more stringent steel capacity swap plan to curb oversupply. Per a Ministry of Industry and Information Technology statement, at least 1.5t of old steel capacity must now be decommissioned to build ⁠every 1.0t of new capacity nationwide

#steel