Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
May 12, 2017
Happy Mother’s Day (at least for one more hour here on the East Coast)…
We are beginning our mid-May flat rolled steel market trends survey at 8 AM ET tomorrow (Monday) morning. If you receive an invitation to participate please take a few minutes to click on the button on your invitation and complete our questionnaire. At the end of this week we will have a Power Point presentation which is available to those who participate in the survey as well as our Premium level customers.
I will be traveling beginning on Wednesday as I head for Atlanta to meet with the Georgia International Convention Center (www.GICC.com), the Marriott Gateway Hotel and the new AV company that will be working with SMU to bring the look and feel of the 2017 conference to a new level. As of this evening we have 105 days remaining before the 7th SMU Steel Summit Conference begins. Tell your steel friends, suppliers and customers to meet us in Atlanta on August 28, 29 & 30th.
I want to take a moment to thank trade attorney Lewis Leibowitz for all of the support he has given Steel Market Update, our readers and those attending our conferences as we try to navigate AD/CVD, Section 337, Circumvention and now the Section 232 investigation. I hope you are finding his help valuable. He will be working with SMU again at this year’s SMU Steel Summit Conference as he teams with former ITC Chairman, Daniel Pearson of the Cato Institute to help our attendees better understand all of the trade suits, deposits, duties, remedies and maybe what’s next. We added a special Pre-Summit program on Monday afternoon. Plan on arriving early and staying until the end. We still have surprises to come.
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
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!