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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.

As markets continued to gauge the extent of oversupply, steel rebar futures increased over CNY 3,100 per tonne, completing the recovery from the nearly eight-year low of CNY 2,790. As a result of the sharp decline in demand, which eliminated mill margins and supported rebar prices during their selloff, China's crude steel output dropped 9.5% in July. However, prices have decreased by 20% so far this year. The market for new homes has declined in previous years due to China's economic recession, as evidenced by July seeing the sharpest annual decrease in home prices since 2015. Additionally, the CCP's plan to lessen the country's reliance on metal-intensive industries like construction and the country's massive housing oversupply crisis made it harder for indebted real estate developers to survive. Consequently, mills offset the plunging demand by ramping up exports at prices deemed low enough for dumping accusations by trade partners. Hence, pledges for trade barriers against Chinese steel ramped up uncertainty on mills' future ability to depend on foreign markets.

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.