NOTICE TO USERS OF THE STEEL IMPORTS DATA

On March 7, the President imposed new duties on many steel products effective March 20. The administrative procedures relating to these duties most likely have caused some understatement of the March data presented in this release.

Whether reported electronically or on paper, data for a given transaction are not provided to the Census Bureau until all duties have been paid. As a result of duty deferral, it is likely that some of the decrease in steel imports shown in this release results from delays in the Census Bureau receiving the data. Moreover, at the time of the release of this report, the Census Bureau does not have information on the volume of trade that has been affected by the imposition of the duties. Some March imports most likely will not be available until the April statistics are issued.