According to the preliminary statistics released by the Ministry of Finance on July 20, Japan's steel exports in June fell by 16.3% to 2.41 million tons on a year-on-year basis. The main reason is that the local economy of most export destination countries has not yet completely rid itself of the negative impact of the new epidemic.
Meanwhile, steel exports in June were up 3.2% from May. The main driver of steel exports to China in June was the strong demand from global steel traders in Tokyo.
In the composition of steel export in June, Japan exported 2 million tons to Asia, accounting for 83% of the total steel export volume of that month, with a year-on-year decrease of 16.1% and a month on month increase of 2.9%; the export volume to China increased significantly on the same and month on month basis.

Country	Export volume (thousand tons)	Month on month	Year  on year
ASEAN	653	-1.9%	-35.8%
China	622	+34.7%	+55.0%
European Union	371	-16.1%	-26.5%