Port-of-Entry

The General View: This October is a hard-luck case. The $399,305,639 in customs value for U.S. hard-surface imports is almost 1% better than September (certainly OK), but trails October 2022 by 23.2% (extremely bad). This is, hopefully, the last painful year-over-year comparison.

The Expected: October 2022 brought some of the largest values and volume for several large sectors, including an astonishing $93.8 million for granite. This October became anything but a repeat, with lower totals for natural stone and manufactured surfaces. And granite? This October came in at $51.7 million – a drop of 45.4%, with a corresponding decline of 46.5% in volume.

The Unexpected: For most of 2023, quartz-surface values and volumes moved at the same percentage rate every month. That pattern blew up in October; the $137.1 million in value is 18% lower than the same time last year, but the volume of 18.5 million ft² is only 2.4% off October 2022 shipments. This October’s volume also beat September totals by 12.8%.

The Strange: The strong performance in October quartz-surface shipments came as sector leader India sent 22.8% less in year-over-year comparison. (Turkey and Israel, usually large-volume suppliers, shipped -48.2% and -69.6%, respectively. Countries with large annual increases included Vietnam (24.8%), Thailand (60.9%), and Malaysia, recovering from 2022’s transshipping squabbles with a boost of 636.1%.

Next Month: November 2022 marked the start of the post-pandemic-boom funk in U.S. hard-surface imports. The data should reveal a more-realistic picture of the market.