China’s Implausible Steel Plunge Points to Oversupply Dilemma
- Last ditch effort on production cap spurs 15% drop in December
- Industry has been told to curb excess output and emissions
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Did China’s steel industry really get within a whisker of meeting Beijing’s production cap last year?
If official data are to be believed, 2023 output ended up barely changed at just over 1 billion tons, thanks to an unprecedented 15% year-on-year plunge in output in the last month to a six-year low. In data going back to 2004, it’s only the second time that December has been lower than November, and never by that margin.