American steel — not overseas dumping — dominates Canadian imports, trade data shows
Written by The Canadian Press on October 27, 2026
American steel makes up more than half of Canada’s imports of galvanized and coated steel, federal trade figures show, raising questions about Cleveland-Cliffs’ argument that an influx of overseas steel is one of the top causes of Stelco layoffs.
Global Affairs Canada import data show that 54.1 per cent of the country’s 625,726 tonnes of galvanized and coated steel sheet imports during the first nine months of 2026 came from the United States.
Stelco’s owner, Cleveland-Cliffs, has blamed the idling of cold-rolled and coated steel operations at its Hamilton, Ont., plant partly on what it describes as dumped offshore steel imports in Canada.
It argues that Ottawa’s trade protections have failed to create a viable market for Canadian producers.
Colin Mang, assistant professor of economics at McMaster University, said the latest trade figures challenge claims that Canada is being flooded with dumped steel from overseas.
“Canada does import a lot of this stuff but much of it comes from the United States, not from other countries, and accusing them of dumping the steel into Canada at artificially low prices is not a fully accurate depiction,” he said.
Canada’s largest sources of galvanized and coated steel sheets outside the United States were South Korea, Taiwan and Germany, accounting for 13.4 per cent, 7.6 per cent and seven per cent of imports, respectively.
The United States supplied more than four times as much as the second-largest source, South Korea, the data shows.
Still, Mang said Canada continues to import large quantities of steel even as domestic demand weakens, putting additional pressure on Canadian producers like Stelco.
“There has been a drop in demand for their product,” he said. “The main issue really is that there’s just less market demand from not just the auto sector, but also from construction and then from exports.”
Dan Ciuriak, director and principal of Ciuriak Consulting, said the bigger problem for Canadian steelmakers is collapsing exports, not foreign imports.
“There’s no flood of imports coming in,” he said. “The problem in terms of Canada’s trade balance is the collapse of exports to the U.S. because of the tariffs.”
Ciuriak said Cleveland-Cliffs actively supported the U.S. tariffs that have hurt Stelco because the levies benefit the company’s American operations by restricting foreign competition and keeping U.S. steel prices high.
He said those higher prices are particularly important to Cleveland-Cliffs, which carries a heavy debt load and relies on strong steel prices to bolster its financial performance and share price.
Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves has argued that Canada’s galvanized steel market is too small to accommodate two domestic producers alongside what he called “an avalanche of imports.”
In a statement Monday, Goncalves pointed specifically to imports of galvanized steel used outside the automotive sector as a problem for Stelco.
“For galvanized products, the imports of non-automotive galvanized steel that continue to flood the Canadian market remain problematic,” he said.
In an Oct. 9 letter to Industry Minister Mélanie Joly, Stelco president and general counsel Paul Simon blamed the company’s difficulties in part on the “market-depressing impact of dumped, offshore imports” and U.S. tariffs.
In response, Joly pointed to federal measures restricting overseas steel imports, including tighter quotas introduced in Dec. 2025. Imports from the United States and Mexico remain exempt from those quotas.
However, Canada has since raised tariffs on certain U.S. steel imports, including galvanized steel, to 50 per cent on Sept. 8, potentially making American steel more expensive for Canadian buyers.
Ciuriak said the new tariffs could reduce galvanized steel imports into Canada, given that the United States is the country’s largest supplier.
Cleveland-Cliffs announced plans on Sept. 28 to lay off up to 500 workers at Stelco’s Hamilton Works and Lake Erie Works in Nanticoke, Ont., citing U.S. tariffs and challenging market conditions.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 27, 2026.
Brett Bundale, The Canadian Press