Global crude steel production falls again in April

As reported by the World Steel Association on May 24, global steel production fell another 5.1 % y-o-y in April 2022, reaching 162.7 million tons. From a geographic standpoint, the most significant decline occurred in the Middle East (-14.5%) and the Russia/Ukraine/CIS area (-18.4%).
The top steel producing country is still China, which produced 92.8 Mt in April 2022, down 5.2% in April 2021. Bucking the trend, there's India, which we find in second place in the ranking, with 10.1 million tons of steel produced (up 6.4 percent over April of the previous year).
In the third and fourth places in the ranking, we find Japan and the United States, respectively, falling a little lower in percentage terms. Japan produced 7.5 Mt in April 2022, down 3.3% y-o-y. The US produced 6.9 Mt, 1.7% lower than the same month in 2021.
The overall decline in production is due to several factors, starting with the upheavals in global trade flows caused by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the reprise of Covid-19 cases in China and other countries, not to mention the exponential rise in energy and transportation costs.
These latter problems, which had already emerged in the second half of last year, have been considerably exacerbated by the events of recent months.
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