Steel Prices Rise (Again) Amid Persistent US Tariffs

Clark Packard and Alfredo Carrillo Obregon

US steel prices continue to rise and are now at their highest level since mid-2023. Although domestic supply-side factors are likely behind the more recent price movements, US tariffs continue to play a significant role by limiting consumers’ access to foreign-made steel, thereby entrenching domestic producers as the dominant players in the US steel market.

According to SteelBenchmarker, the price of US hot-rolled band (HRB) reached $1,208 per metric ton on June 24, the highest reading since April 2023. The price of HRB in the US is 54 percent higher than in Western Europe ($780) and 146 percent higher than the world steel export market ($490); thus, while steel prices are trending down in other markets, US prices continue to increase. After this latest reading, the current US HRB price is 70 percent higher than it was on February 10, 2025, when President Trump announced that Section 232 tariffs would apply to steel imported from all countries. Figure 1 depicts these trends.

Even though domestic raw steel production is up 6 percent through the first six months of 2026, relative to the same period last year, the market is showing other signs of tightness: Lead times for some products are closing in on six to eight months (multiyear highs); limited quantities of steel are available in spot markets; and some mills are reportedly capping the amount of steel that customers can order through longer-term contracts. Some of this tightness can be explained by domestic supply-side issues, including outages and damage to equipment that US steel mills experienced in late 2025 and early 2026. As these issues are resolved, market participants expect lead times to decline and more output to become available to spot buyers. 

Yet, the market is likely to remain tight—and therefore, prices are likely to remain high—given the significant decline in US steel imports since the tariffs entered into effect. 

According to an American Iron and Steel Institute analysis of Census Bureau data, the United States imported 26 percent less steel by volume from January to May 2026 than during the same period last year (Figure 2). Imports rose month over month in May but remained far below last year’s pace. A recent Steel Market Update analysis illustrates the tariffs’ role in driving this decline and increasing costs for American steel consumers: After incorporating the costs of duties and theoretical importing costs (i.e., freight, handling, and trader margins, which may vary in practice), domestic hot-rolled steel costs just $10 per short ton (st) more than Italian steel and $6/​st more than German steel. Strip out the 50 percent Section 232 tariffs, however, and the gap explodes: American steel would run $363/​st more expensive than Italian steel and $361/​st more expensive than German steel. This dynamic is also evident across other steel products. Put differently, the tariffs are artificially propping up higher-priced American steel vis-à-vis European steel. Meanwhile, steel from other regions, including Türkiye and East Asia, remains cheaper than US-made steel, but higher imports from these regions have not replaced lost volumes from elsewhere.

The tariffs have also compounded additional global disruptions that have further complicated firms’ access to steel from abroad. Earlier this year, the conflict in Iran pushed up energy costs and disrupted the supply of certain products, and those pressures may persist depending on the future of the US–Iran ceasefire. Even so, the US market remains tight enough that buyers who can secure more competitive terms abroad, or absorb the financial and logistical costs of importing, are turning to imports to fulfill their steel needs. On the other hand, smaller firms without the capital or personnel to manage the process stay stuck on the high-price island the United States has become.

By maintaining the steel tariffs, the federal government is giving US steel mills, as one industry analyst put it, “absolute pricing power and absolute supply power.” The domestic industry can afford to increase prices and deliver lower quantities of steel as long as it remains buoyed by tariffs (and additional disruptions) that increase the costs of importing foreign steel. US steel consumers are bearing the cost of this policy-driven reallocation of pricing and supply power, as shown by the Producer Price Index (a widely used proxy for input costs) for steel mill products sitting at its highest point since May 2023 (Figure 3). 

While domestic steel producers are investing in additional industrial capacity, many of these expansions are scheduled to come online in years, not months. Thus, for the foreseeable future, US consumers of steel and products made with steel will continue to operate in a market distorted by a tariff policy that works to empower an industry in long-running decline at the expense of American competitiveness.