Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
December 18, 2015
This will be a busy week – at least the beginning of the week. We have the US Department of Commerce scheduled to release Preliminary Determinations on Heavy Walled Rectangular Welded Carbon Pipes and Tubes from Turkey on Monday. On Tuesday (vote will be on Monday) the US DOC is scheduled to release antidumping (AD) Preliminary Determinations on corrosion resistant steels (galvanized/Galvalume). The CORE announcement will be a critical one for the domestic steel industry and will most likely clear a path (provide a road map) for the cold rolled and hot rolled AD determinations to follow. Our expectation is for China to be hit hard while other countries will be not so much (or none at all).
This is also the week of Christmas and at the end of next week is New Year’s Eve. Both of these events will impact our publishing schedule. We will publish again on Tuesday, December 22nd and then we will not publish another Executive level issue until the following Tuesday, December 29th unless something happens that needs to be covered and brought to the attention of our customers. We will not publish on Thursday, December 31, 2015 and will have a limited issue on the following Sunday (end of month data), January 3, 2016.
A reminder, we have a few spots open for our next Steel 101 workshop which will be held in Starkville, Mississippi and will include a tour of the SDI Columbus steel mill. The dates for the workshop are January 19-20, 2016. You can find details on our website or you are welcome to contact our office: 800-432-3475.
If you are planning on taking an extended holiday over the next week or two, please enjoy your friends and family and be safe. We are looking forward to seeing you again in the New Year.
As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
Happy Holidays.
John Packard, Publisher
John Packard
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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!