Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
December 16, 2016
If there are going to be price increase announcements prior to the New Year they will most likely be made this week as opposed to next when most of the steel community is taking time off for the Holidays. If they are not made this week then the expectation has to be the first week of the New Year, with the expectation that scrap prices will be moving higher once the January negotiations kick into gear.
A reminder about our Holiday publishing schedule. We will publish on Tuesday and Thursday of this week. We will not publish on Sunday (Christmas Day) and will have very abbreviated issues on Tuesday, December 27th as well as Thursday, December 29th. We will not publish on Sunday, January 1st. We will return to our normal publication schedule with Tuesday, January 3rd issue.
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John Packard, Publisher
John Packard
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Final Thoughts
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Final Thoughts
A short tour of key dates in the Nippon/USS deal, and what the future might hold.
Final Thoughts
I sort of expected big news last Friday and over the long, Memorial Day weekend. Because that's become more the norm than the exception for steel this year. Sure enough, Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday afternoon that he had given his blessing to a “partnership” between Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel. And then over the weekend we had market moving new on tariffs, this time involving the EU.
Final Thoughts
We're going to have to wait a bit longer for the final outcome of the Nippon/USS deal.
Final Thoughts
Sure, demand isn’t as good the market had hoped it would be earlier this year. But assuming it doesn’t fall of a cliff, buyers will have to restock at some point. And that might give domestic mills enough leverage to raise prices again.