Final Thoughts

January 22, 2018

We have mentioned this elsewhere in today’s newsletter, but it bears repeating. The recent Section 201 decision by President Trump on residential washers and solar equipment may well be a blueprint for what we might see when the Section 232 decision is made on steel. The formula seems to be pointing toward some form of quota followed by punitive duties of 20 percent or higher in the first year.

The issue is the difference between products like washing machines and steel. It’s relatively easy to regulate washers, where there are a small number of manufacturers to control. With steel, you have countries (like Vietnam) that have many steel mills and then dozens of trading companies offering their steel into the United States. The country is not the importer of record, it’s the trading company here in the United States. How do the various trading companies know how much Vietnamese steel (or if it is by product, how much galvanized) is committed to be imported into the U.S.?

My opinion is you need to look at Jan. 30 as a potential target date. That is the date of the state of the union speech to be delivered by President Trump.

I am with my team of Steel 101 instructors in Mobile, Ala., where we will be conducting our workshop over the next couple of days. The weather is good (low 60s) and we are looking forward to our tour of the SSAB steel mill on Wednesday afternoon.

The next Steel 101 workshop will be outside of Chicago in Merrillville, Ind., on March 28-29. Go to our website for more details.

As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.

John Packard, President & CEO