Steel · U.S. International Trade Administration (SIMA)
Steel Import Monitor (SIMA) Data
Datadory delivers steel import monitor sima data covering the Commerce Department's early-warning window on US steel mill product imports: weekly import-license volumes by country and HTS product group, monthly Census-based import and export monitors, country-of-melt-and-pour attribution, plus worldwide steel-trade and scrap frames across eight linked monitors.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
- Where it covers
- United States imports and exports by partner country; the Global Steel Trade and Scrap Monitors extend the frame to worldwide flows
- How far back
- Rolling seven-day license windows stacked month by month; monthly Census periods carried at preliminary and final dates; history reaching back to the SIMA program's start, with the modernized platform dating to late 2020
- How fine
- Country x HTS product group x period; melt-and-pour attributed at license-application level
What is the Steel Import Monitor (SIMA)?
It is the federal government's early-warning account of American steel imports, delivered here as typed rows rather than an interactive screen to click through. Steel Import Monitor (SIMA) is the Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis system operated by the US Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration, modernized in late 2020 in the program's first overhaul since 2005. One system, two clocks: a licensing side collects steel import license applications, and a monitor side publishes what those applications show alongside the Census Bureau's trade figures.
Eight tools hang off the hub - the U.S. Steel Import Monitor carrying license data beside Census imports, searchable by country and product; the Steel Mill Export Monitor; the Downstream Import and Export Monitors; the Melt and Pour Dashboard; the Global Steel Trade Monitor; the Global Scrap Monitor; U.S. Recent Notable Trends; and a Monthly Steel Factsheet. Within Datadory's catalog of 1,744 datasets across 159 viable industries, this record scores 9/10 - one of twenty-three steel records.
What do SIMA sample rows look like?
Exactly as they land after normalization - one block per monitor layer, closed by the monthly permit totals the trade press quotes:
# u.s. steel import monitor - weekly license layer
tool : U.S. Steel Import Monitor
window : prior seven days of new license data
grain : country x hts_product_group
measures : import_license_volume
# monthly census layer - preliminary print, then final
tools : U.S. Steel Import Monitor + Steel Mill Export Monitor
grain : country x hts_product_group x period
measures : census_import_volume, census_export_volume
periods : month, year-to-date
# melt-and-pour layer - license-application level
tool : Melt and Pour Dashboard
dimension : country_of_melt_and_pour
grain : one origin attribution per license application
# worldwide frames
Global_Steel_Trade_Monitor : global trade in steel mill products
Global_Scrap_Monitor : worldwide ferrous scrap flows
# monthly permit totals as tabulated in the AISI summary of SIMA filings (July 2026)
total_permits_nt : 2,294,000 finished_permits_nt : 1,594,000
finished_share_of_filings : 69% finished_market_share_pct : 18
top_supplier : South Korea (514,000 NT)Read what those rows already say. License volume and Census volume sit in the same grain deliberately: licenses lead the settled official figure by weeks, so the pair lets one table carry both the early-warning signal and the number that eventually confirms or revises it. The July 2026 permit totals tabulated in the AISI summary read 2,294,000 net tons against 1,594,000 finished - finished filings running 69 percent of the total - with South Korea the top supplier at 514,000 net tons and finished imports holding an 18 percent market share. Request a sample naming your countries, product groups and months, and the same shapes come back filled.
What fields does the Steel Import Monitor include?
Six verified fields carry the dataset, written against the published monitors rather than inferred. Every observation keys on country and HTS product group - the mill-product categories defined by each monitor's own HTS concordance, with separate concordances for the import, export, downstream and global trade views - carried on a period column spanning weekly license windows and monthly Census periods with year-to-date aggregates.
The measure layer pairs import license volume from SIMA license applications with Census import and export volumes released at preliminary and final dates, while the Melt and Pour Dashboard contributes country of melt and pour, attributed at the license-application level. Anything deeper folds under additional fields on request rather than being promised blind.
What does coverage look like across geography, time and granularity?
Geography: United States imports and exports by partner country, with the Global Steel Trade Monitor and Global Scrap Monitor extending the frame to worldwide flows when the question stops being what crossed the US border.
Temporal: two clocks run at once, and the offset between them is the point. Weekly license windows roll in continuously as applications arrive; monthly Census-based updates land at preliminary and final dates and quietly revise the picture the licenses sketched. History reaches back to the SIMA program's start, with the modernized platform dating to late 2020.
Granularity: country x HTS product group x period throughout, so a surge can be located to a product line and a supplier in one cut. Melt-and-pour attribution runs finer still - at the level of individual license applications - which is what makes origin verification possible at all.
How is this dataset delivered?
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Pick the channel your stack already speaks. The rows arrive identical either way - cleaned, typed, and documented against the field dictionary above, with the provisional character of license data kept visible beside the Census figures that settle it.
Every delivery ships with the dictionary and sample rows for validation; name your countries, product groups and months at sample request and the ongoing feed lands on whatever cadence your models need.
Who uses this US steel import data, and for what?
An early-warning ledger earns its keep in five specific jobs:
- Trade-policy analysts read the license-versus-Census gap as the surge signal: filings move weeks before official figures confirm them, and finished-share movements - 18 percent and change in mid-2026 - are the border story arriving in data before headlines.
- Supply-chain and procurement teams watch license volumes by country and product group before they surface in lead times, and use melt-and-pour origin to check where a supplier's mill product actually started.
- Market researchers and consultants anchor US import-demand studies on one issuer's definitions across eight monitors, so the product-group cut agrees between the import and export views.
- Investors and quant researchers pair import penetration against domestic utilization - import pressure and mill tempo on two clocks is the spread worth modeling.
- Journalists and academics cite Commerce's own measurement rather than a wire-service paraphrase. Worked workflows continue on our supply-chain mapping and price monitoring pages.
Which personas get the most value?
Trade-policy and competitive-intel analysts get the widest aperture - eight monitors, one grain, license lead time intact; the fuller workflow lives on market researchers in steel. Supply-chain and procurement teams get country-level signals early enough to act on, with origin attribution attached; see investors and quants in steel for the cycle-framing companion. Data scientists and ML engineers get a stable country x product-group x period grid that joins to any bilateral trade table on three columns alone; see data scientists in steel. Journalists, academics and students get the government's own numbers rather than someone else's chart of them.
Notes and related datasets
Provenance note - published by the Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis system of the US Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration, with import figures completed by US Census Bureau trade releases. The licensing platform and the public monitors were modernized together in late 2020, the program's first overhaul since 2005.
Methodology note - license data is a filing snapshot and leads the settled figure; Census releases arrive preliminary and then final, so every monthly number carries a revision path. Each monitor defines its product groups through its own HTS concordance, and the import, export, downstream and global trade concordances are deliberately not interchangeable - match on country, group and period, not on group labels alone.
Completeness note - Datadory scores this record 9/10 and the six-field dictionary above verifies against the published monitors. Monitor-specific column sets are confirmed at sampling rather than asserted here.
Where to go next:
- AISI Industry Data - the producers' association tabulating these permits in its monthly release.
- Steel Import Management System (SIMS) data - the sister record covering the safeguard-era import surveillance program.
- Monthly crude steel production (71 countries) - the production-side global frame.
- USGS iron and steel statistics - the federal counterpart measuring the metal cycle government-side.
- Best steel datasets - the ranked shortlist across the vertical.
- Steel data hub - the pooled industry view, from national federations to import monitors.
Field dictionary
Every field below is documented against real records. The full dictionary ships with the sample.
| field | type | definition | example |
|---|---|---|---|
country | string | Source country of imports, or destination for exports in the export-facing monitors. | South Korea |
hts_product_group | string | Steel mill product category defined by the monitor's own HTS code concordance - separate concordances for the import, export, downstream and global trade monitors. | category code from the import-monitor concordance |
import_license_volume | number | Steel import tonnage declared on SIMA license applications, published weekly as early-warning data. | weekly tonnage per country x product-group cell |
census_import_export_volume | number | Official US Census Bureau trade volume for the same flows, released at preliminary and final dates each month. | month row plus year-to-date column |
country_of_melt_and_pour | string | Country where the steel was melted and poured, attributed from license application data in the Melt and Pour Dashboard. | origin country per license application |
period | date | Reporting period of the observation - weekly license windows or monthly Census periods with year-to-date aggregates. | week window or month |
Additional fields | - | Folded under "additional fields on request": monitor-specific column sets beyond the shared six - downstream product detail, export-monitor selections and the trend-summary series. | on request |
Monitor inventory - the eight tools behind the SIMA hub
| monitor | data_basis | clock |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. Steel Import Monitor | Import license applications beside released Census import data, searchable by country and product | weekly license windows over a monthly Census spine |
| Steel Mill Export Monitor | Census data on US exports of select steel mill products | monthly, at preliminary and final dates |
| Downstream Import and Export Monitors | Census data on downstream steel products | monthly, at preliminary and final dates |
| Melt and Pour Dashboard | Country of melt and pour taken from license application data | at license-application level |
| Global Steel Trade Monitor | Interactive view of global trade in steel mill products | monthly hub cycle |
| Global Scrap Monitor | Worldwide ferrous scrap flows | monthly hub cycle |
| U.S. Recent Notable Trends | Trend summaries across recent import behavior | monthly hub cycle |
| Monthly Steel Factsheet | Headline monthly figures in one sheet | monthly |
What teams do with it
- Import-surge early warning Track license volumes by country and product group weeks before the Census figure confirms them - the gap between the two is the actionable window.
- Trade-policy and remedy monitoring Follow finished-market share and supplier concentration across the monthly monitors, where a shift in either is the border-pressure story told in tonnage.
- Origin verification for procurement Check country of melt and pour at license-application level against supplier claims, catching transshipment that shipment-country data alone would miss.
- Bilateral trade-flow modeling Join the country x HTS-group x period grid to any bilateral trade table on three columns, with the export monitor supplying the outbound direction.
- Import-pressure signals for pricing models Feed import penetration by product group into price and utilization models as an exogenous driver rather than a residual.
Questions buyers ask
What fields does the steel import monitor sima data include?
Six verified fields: the partner country, the HTS product group as defined by each monitor's own concordance, the reporting period across weekly and monthly grains, import license volume from SIMA license applications, official Census import and export volumes at preliminary and final dates, and country of melt and pour attributed at the license-application level. Monitor-specific columns beyond these fold under additional fields on request.
How do license figures differ from Census figures?
They measure the same flows on two clocks. License volume is compiled from import license applications filed ahead of shipment, which makes it the early-warning read; Census volume is the official trade figure released first at a preliminary date and then a final one, which makes it the settled read. Reading the pair in one grain shows how far ahead the filings run and how often the official figure revises.
What is country of melt and pour?
The country where the steel was actually melted and poured, as declared on the import license application and surfaced in the Melt and Pour Dashboard. It cuts through rerouting at the product level: steel melted in one country and finished in another carries both attributes separately, which is why origin verification work starts here rather than at the shipment country.
Which monitors cover exports and downstream products?
The Steel Mill Export Monitor covers US exports of select steel mill products from Census data, and the Downstream Import and Export Monitors extend coverage to downstream steel products - goods made further along from mill products - each under its own HTS concordance. Both run on the monthly cycle that follows the Census preliminary and final releases.
How far back does the history reach?
To the SIMA program's start, with the platform's current form dating to its late-2020 modernization - the first overhaul since 2005. Weekly license windows and monthly Census periods accumulate independently, so the usable depth differs by layer; the exact span for your named countries and product groups is scoped and quoted when you request a sample rather than promised blind.
Who uses steel import monitor sima data?
Trade-policy analysts timing import surges off the license-to-Census gap, supply-chain teams watching country-level filings before they reach lead times, market researchers sizing US import demand by product group on one issuer's definitions, investors pairing import penetration against domestic mill utilization, and journalists and academics who want the Commerce Department's own figures behind every tonnage claim.
Datasets that pair with this one
- AISI Industry Data The producers' association tabulating these import permits in its monthly release.
- Steel Import Management System (SIMS) data The sister record covering the safeguard-era import surveillance program.
- Monthly crude steel production (71 countries) The production-side global frame for placing import pressure in context.
- USGS iron and steel statistics The federal counterpart measuring the metal cycle government-side.
- Best steel datasets The ranked shortlist across the whole vertical.
- Steel data hub The pooled industry view, from national federations to import monitors.
See the rows before you pay anything.
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