China's crude steel production slumps in July

China’s crude steel production saw a slight dip in July compared with June as suppliers struggled to find a balance between cutting output to raise prices and increasing production to boost exports, The Wall Street Journal reported. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the bellweather industrial-production indicator dropped 1% to 61.69 million metric tons in July on an average daily basis, but increased on a monthly basis by 2.5%. Daily average production was down nearly 1% from June production of 2.01 million tons. “It’s fairly clear that the weight of the combination of near-record production through mid-July in the face of waning domestic steel demand has put China in a ‘perfect storm’ of near three-year low pricing,” US-based Steel Market Intelligence said. Nonetheless, the slump in steel production was lower than analyst expectations of approximately 3%.