Market Wire

Mexico Overtakes China as the Top Fabricated Structural Steel Supplier

China supplied 31.0% of U.S. fabricated structural steel imports in 2018 and 9.4% in 2025, a 21.6-point shift. Mexico now leads the lane at 22.1%, while Denmark added the most share over the period at 9.5 points.…

China supplied 31.0% of U.S. fabricated structural steel imports in 2018 and 9.4% in 2025, a 21.6-point shift. Mexico now leads the lane at 22.1%, while Denmark added the most share over the period at 9.5 points. Whether the re-route is actually cheaper turns on duty and freight, not the invoice price.

The year-by-year track of China's share: 2018: 31.0% · 2019: 17.2% · 2020: 14.6% · 2021: 14.2% · 2022: 13.0% · 2023: 10.6% · 2024: 9.7% · 2025: 9.4%. A shift this steady across seven years is structural — tariff differentials, buyer de-risking, and capacity built elsewhere — rather than a single year's price story.

For a buyer the actionable question is the landed comparison: the new lane's invoice price plus its effective duty plus its freight, against the old one's. The tariff monitor carries the per-country effective rates for this family, which is where that arithmetic starts.

Published 2026-08-20.