Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
November 24, 2014
First, I want to wish everyone in the United States a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday with family and friends. Steel Market Update will not publish on Thursday but will return to our normal schedule on Sunday evening.
Our offices will be open both on Wednesday and Friday of this week but will be closed on Thanksgiving day.
A note that I will be speaking at the HARDI conference in San Antonio, Texas during the first weekend in December. After that we have a private sales consulting workshop we are producing for a service center. If your company has an interest in one-on-one workshops please contact me at: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com.
Our next Steel 101 workshop will be held in South Carolina on January 20-21, 2015. Details can be found on our website. Registration is open and a tour of the Nucor Berkeley steel mill is part of our program.
I want to welcome our newest members to the SMU community. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions please do not hesitate to contact our offices: info@SteelMarketUpdate.com or by phone: 800-432-3475. Many articles begin as one of our readers asks a question or makes a suggestion.
As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher
John Packard
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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.
Final Thoughts
We joked in our last Final Thoughts that Wiley trade attorney Tim Brightbill – one of the nation’s leading experts on trade law and policy – would probably be revising his presentation on Trump, trade policy, and tariffs for the Tampa Steel Conference. He did. And even after those last-minute revisions, he actually got trumped […]
Final Thoughts
The whole SMU team is packing up our laptops and our SMU polos/cardigans, loading up the PowerPoint slides, and preparing to make the trek down to Florida for the Tampa Steel Conference. There will be plenty to talk about!
Final Thoughts
From one group of folks, I’ve heard that Trump might not wait until Feb. 1 – the date he threatened on to place tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico. They say he could act as soon as Friday. And then there are those who don’t think anything will happen before April 1. That’s the deadline for Commerce, Treasury, and USTR to submit key reports on “America First Trade Policy” to President Trump.
Final Thoughts
Trump made a clarification in a speech on Monday. Previously, he had declared the word “tariff” the most beautiful word in the dictionary. No longer.