US reports: steel imports continued to decline in June, falling by 10.3 percent from May and 15.6 percent from a year earlier.

Imports have now decreased for five straight months and seven of the past eight months, and the 3.05 million net tons of imports in June were nearly one-third lower than the total last October.

In May 2014, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released a report that asserted, according to its title, that “Surging steel imports put up to half a million U.S. jobs at risk.” Since that time, monthly steel imports have fallen by more than 24 percent, and the economic factors that have contributed to the reduced use of steel – most notably, the slowdown in drilling and fracking projects in the energy sector – are regularly cited as reasons for the nation’s economic sluggishness. Moreover, the steel import decline began in October 2014, the starting point for a significant slowdown in the growth of the economy. Taken together, these developments indicate that, notwithstanding the claims of the EPI report and likeminded critics, steel imports are positively correlated with economic growth.