Weak demand vs production costs?

摘要

This year.s outlook for the steelmaking industry is somewhat vague consideringthe increasing imbalance created by growing prices and weakening demand.While China keeps boosting import of raw materials, their prices continue togrow worldwide forcing producers in other countries to pay more. The situationis aggravated by the excessive liquidity in global markets as speculativeactivities in raw material markets are very profitable these days. So, as thedemand for raw materials grows, their prices move up as well. Due to thecontinuous increase in production costs, in March-April prices for finishedsteel products returned to the highs of early 2008.