Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
March 25, 2016
SMU still has a number of open spots available for our next Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals workshop. The workshop will be held just outside of Toledo, Ohio as part of our program will be a tour of one of the most successful flat rolled mini-mills in the United States, the North Star Bluescope mill. Our highly experienced instructors, who come from steel mills (long and flat rolled), service center and manufacturing, are looking forward to working with another exceptional group of attendees. If you would like to learn more about our Steel 101 workshop please go to our website or feel free to contact me at: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com or by phone at: 800-432-3475 with any questions you might have.
I want to welcome our newest member companies (subscribers) to Steel Market Update. I encourage you to spend time going through our website as well as reading our newsletters. If you need help navigating the site or have questions please contact: Brett@SteelMarketUpdate.com and he should be able to assist you. If you have questions, comments or suggestions we are all ears. You can send them to me personally (my email is in the paragraph above) or to our general inbox: info@SteelMarketUpdate.com. Thank you for putting your faith in us and we will do our best to provide the best informed market intelligence possible.
I will be in Naples, Florida on Thursday through Saturday of this week attending the Association of Steel Distributors (ASD) annual meeting.
As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher

John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts
We’ve talked about tariffs ad nauseam for much of the year. And I’m afraid this topic isn’t going away anytime soon. There’s a feeling that the tariff “can” will just be kicked down the road again and again, and again.

Final Thoughts
Can technology help with pig iron and DRI/HBI tariffs?

Final Thoughts
Tariff-related noise aside, there is one basic factor keeping buyers on the sidelines. Despite recent declines, HR prices remain at historically high levels. And there is no obvious support to keep them there.

Final Thoughts
United Airlines raised eyebrows earlier this month when it provided two forecasts for 2025 – one assuming a relatively stable economy and another assuming a recession. The reason? Uncertainty around the impact of President Trump’s policy shocks on the broader economy. And it sometimes feels like we’re seeing a battle between those two narratives (stable vs recession) play out within in the pages of this newsletter.

Final Thoughts
Despite some scary headlines lately (especially about Trump potentially firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell) this is not October 2008 (financial crisis) or March 2020 (onset of the pandemic). But it sure seems like we’ve taken a relatively strong economy and poured a thick sauce of uncertainty over it.