Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
March 13, 2014
One of our readers sent me an article produced by another steel-related publication about the state of Kentucky offering financial incentives to AK Steel. The Kentucky Industrial Revitalization Act is being extended with one of the hopes that AK Steel will use the incentives to help reline the Ashland blast furnace. The question asked by our reader was – How is this different than what foreign countries do to assist their own manufacturing or steel producing companies?
I decided to write an article about the potential for dumping suits to be filed against coated steels at this time – even though the rumors have been out there for a number of months – because the topic had heated up over the past few days and specific mill names are being attached to the rumors.
Besides coated products there are rumors of a U.S. mill being close to filing dumping suits on Chinese cold rolled – specifically Angang and WISCO are named as the main offenders.
There will be plenty of time to argue the merits of each case once the suits are filed. As the OCTG cases have proven not everything and everyone is dumping. Politics is part of the process both domestic and international.
The one item where imports seem to be a bit out of whack is Galvalume – especially prepainted Galvalume. There are a number of mill suppliers in both the north and south who produce the product yet foreign Galvalume has held tight to their market share.
For those attending the SBB/Platts steel and scrap conference next week in Chicago – John Temples from our office will be covering all three days. Look for him amongst the crowd.
I will be at the Association of Steel Distributors annual meeting in Orlando next week and then at the Toronto Steel Buyers meeting in Toronto on the 26th of March.
For those of you who are new to Steel Market Update and are on a free trial of our newsletter and website. We did make a change to our trial access. We have upgraded our trial members to Premium Level access. You will be receiving the Executive newsletter (this one) plus Premium supplements and have access to all areas of the website.
If you are an Executive member and would like to see what Premium access means you are welcome to contact John Temples (JohnTemples@SteelMarketUpdate.com) or Brett Linton (Brett@SteelMarketUpdate.com) and they can set you up for a week or two to try Premium on for size. You can find more about Premium Level service on our website under the Newsletter and Subscription tabs.
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John Packard, Publisher
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Final thoughts
SMU has heard from some larger buyers who have stepped back into the market to buy at prices that, if not at a bottom, they assess to be close to one. Is it enough to stretch out lead times and send prices upward again? Or do we continue to scrape along the mid-$600s per short ton (st) as we have been doing for most of the last month?
Final thoughts
Cleveland-Cliffs Chairman, President and CEO Lourenco Goncalves had some insightful things to say today about the steel market and about a conference we suspect might be Steel Summit.
Final thoughts
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, when you add in some commentary from respected peers in the steel industry to those pictures, that may shoot you up to five thousand words, at least. In that spirit, we’ve added some snapshots from our market survey this week, along with some comments from market participants.
Final thoughts
I thought we’d have more clarity this week on Section 232, Mexico, and a potential carve-out for steel melted and poured in Brazil. As of right now, the only official comment I have is from the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR).
Final thoughts
There are just 40 days left until the 2024 SMU Steel Summit gets underway on Aug. 26 at the Georgia International Convention Center (GICC) in Atlanta. And I’m pleased to announce that it's official now: More than 1,000 people have registered to at attend! Another big development: The desktop version of the networking app for the event has officially launched!