Seven months after sanctions imposed by the US and Europe made it difficult to export Russian steel, the flow of trade to supply the global steel market is changing. At present, the market is basically divided into two categories, low price variety market (mainly Russian steel) and high price variety market (no or a small amount of Russian steel market).

Notably, despite European sanctions on Russian steel, European imports of Russian pig iron increased by 250% year on year in the second quarter of 2022, and Europe is still the largest importer of Russian semi-finished materials, among which Belgium imports the most, imported 660,000 tons in the second quarter, accounting for 52% of the total import of semi-finished materials in Europe. And Europe will continue to import from Russia in the future, since there are no specific sanctions on Russian semi-finished materials. However, the United States from May began to stop imports of Russian plate, plate imports in the second quarter fell by about 95% year-on-year. Thus, Europe may become a low price sheet market, and the United States due to the reduction of Russian supply, become a relatively high price sheet market.