Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts

Written by John Packard


While attending the ASD meeting in Cleveland last week, SMU reporter, Sandy Williams heard a steel service center discussing the impact of Obamacare on their company which is located in Ohio, “Because Obamacare healthcare and some of the laws, quite frankly, in the State of Ohio, we are now forced to go to temporary employees because we are at the 50 employee threshold. Up to three years ago our employees paid none of their health costs. Today they pay 15% of their health care costs.  We want to hold them at 15%. We don’t want to overburden our employees with healthcare. The insurance companies have to be regulated, they have come to us because we have two employees with serious cancer problems and are threatening not to rate us, not to sell us.”

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Latest in Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts

As Wolfe Research’s Timna Tanner put it in her opening talk at Tampa on Monday afternoon, we’re living in a world of “Trumplications” now. That probably means – at least in the short term – higher scrap costs, lower imports from countries hit with or threated tariffs, and higher steel prices. SMU data reflects that. Scrap went up in January. More than 75% of the respondents to our more recent survey expect scrap to go up again February, maybe by a lot. Lead times, meanwhile, have been ticking upward this month. It started with hot-rolled coil and plate earlier this month. Now we’re seeing coated lead times extending too.