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More than half of the final steel used worldwide was in the construction and infrastructure sectors in 2019, with the mechanical equipment and automotive sectors coming in second and third. Steel is an alloy usually made by combining its main component iron and other elements. The largest steel-producing country today is China, accounting for 57% of the world's steel production by 2020. China will be the first country to produce more than one billion tons of steel by 2020.

In the face of plentiful supply and ambiguous demand, steel rebar futures in China dropped to CNY 3,040 a tonne, moving in a muted range since plunging to a seven-month low of CNY 3,017 on April 22. Both Beijing and Washington have underlined that de-escalation negotiations have not yet begun, which limits confidence of a quicker suspension of levies, despite the US Presidential Administration's indication that it would not sustain the severe tariffs it placed on China. As a result, the effect of tariffs on China's low consumer demand increased the possibility that real estate values would keep declining and put pressure on the balance sheets of indebted developers, potentially leading to their liquidation and eliminating a significant source of demand for rebar worldwide. Lower demand and increasing trade protectionism had previously driven Beijing to signal capacity cuts in the steel sector, but the latest data showed that mills continued to churn out more steel. Crude steel output in China rose by 3.6% annually to 93 million tons in March.

The World Steel Association (worldsteel) publishes its Short-Term Outlook (SRO) for 2022 and 2023. Worldsteel estimates that steel demand will grow by 0.4% in 2022, reaching 1,840.2 million tons after a 2.7% percent increase in 2021. In 2023, steel demand will increase by 2.2% to reach 1,881.4 million tons. Current projections are made against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and are subject to high uncertainty.