Global steel output continues slide in December 2025

Steel output worldwide slipped below 140 million metric tons (mmt) in December 2025, concluding a calendar year when global production of the metal fell by 2.0 percent, according to the Brussels-based World Steel Association (Worldsteel).

Worldsteel, which collects information from associations representing 70 countries, says producers in those nations made 139.6 mmt last December. That total is down by 3.7 percent compared with December 2024 and represented a less than 0.5 percent decline from output in November 2025.

Among the 10 largest steel producing nations in 2025, four of them recorded a rise in output compared with the previous year while six experienced declines.

Nations with rising output were: India (+10.4 percent); Turkey (+3.3 percent); the United States (+3.1 percent); and Iran (+1.4 percent).

For American steel recyclers, the increase in U.S. output helped keep end market demand and prices steady last year. While the figures from India and Turkey also were encouraging, rolling mills in those nations sometimes opted for low-cost slabs and billets in 2025 rather than keeping their scrap-fed melt shops running at full throttle.

Among countries with declining production last year was the nation that makes about half of the world’s steel—the People’s Republic of China. Output in that nation fell by 4.4 percent in 2025, from slightly more than 1 billion metric tons in 2024 to 960.8 mmt last year.

In a breakdown of regional output provided by Worldsteel, the disruption to trade patterns and economic growth caused by Russia’s ongoing lethal invasion of Ukraine continues to create negative effects in that part of the world.

In 2025, mills in a region defined by Worldsteel as consisting of Russia, other Commonwealth of Independent States and Ukraine made 4.4 percent less steel in 2025 compared with the prior year.

That drop occurred after the same region experienced a 4.2 percent decline in output in 2024 compared with 2023.

In the first 17 days of January, mills in the U.S. continued to show positive melt shop output momentum. According to the Washington-based American Iron & Steel Association (AISI), the more than 4.23 million tons of output from Jan. 1-17, 2026, represents a 2.9 percent increased compared with the production in the same two-and-a-half-week span in 2025.