Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
March 14, 2018
I went out and looked around to see what I could find regarding foreign steel offers into the U.S. market. I did learn that the Mexican mills are offering to some of their core U.S. customers, but they do not have a lot of steel to sell. The pricing on hot rolled is being referenced in the $840-$880 range delivered into the Texas market.
We also learned that Turkish cold rolled offers are out there. We heard Turkish cold rolled being offered at $990-$1,000 per ton including all extras and all duties. To put this into perspective, we are hearing that domestic hot rolled offers range from a low of $42.50/cwt ($850 per ton) to as high as $45.00/cwt ($900 per ton). Add another $100-140 per ton to get to domestic cold rolled/coated base pricing.
We have been in constant contact with trade attorney Lewis Leibowitz who is advising SMU on the status of the Section 232 publication in the Federal Register (it has not happened yet). He also has been helping us understand the procedure that needs to be in place by March 18 (Sunday) for how to file an exclusion and how the process will work. Leibowitz told us the following in an email on the subject:
I have gotten questions about the process for product exclusions. The procedures are due to be released by Sunday, March 18. The criteria have already been published in the Proclamations on steel and aluminum. The standards are:
“[The Secretary of Commerce] is hereby authorized to provide relief from the additional duties set forth in this proclamation for any [aluminum or steel] article determined not to be produced in the United States in a sufficient and reasonably available amount or of a satisfactory quality and is also authorized to provide such relief based upon specific national security considerations.”
The Proclamation requires that any petition for exclusion must be submitted by “a directly affected party located in the United States.”
The procedures will deal with the timing of applications and the information required to be submitted. There are requests for exclusion already in preparation, although Commerce will not disclose if any have been received. By comparison, the steel safeguard tariffs provided for an exclusion process several months before the tariffs took effect. We are already well behind.
There is a “rumor” letters are circulating asking President Trump to postpone the imposition of the tariffs. The delay in the publication of the tariffs may mean that the president is considering a delay. However, this is just a Washington, D.C., rumor and has not been confirmed.
Lewis Leibowitz will be answering questions about trade issues, tariffs, duties and everything connected on Monday afternoon, Aug. 27 at our 8th SMU Steel Summit Conference in Atlanta. We will be publishing our full agenda next week as we work to confirm the latest batch of speakers. Go to: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com/events/steel-summit for more information, registration and lodging details.
We just booked the Westin on Beale Street in Memphis as the location for the classroom portion of our June Steel 101 workshop. This will be a special workshop as we will be touring two Nucor facilities: Nucor Arkansas (Hickman) and Nucor-Yamato. Our attendees will be exposed to a flat rolled mill, a beam mill and a Castrip line (one of only two in the United States). We should have the workshop on the website by no later than early next week. The dates for the workshop will be June 5-6, 2018. I want to thank Nucor for their hospitality, and we look forward to working with the Arkansas group.
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
We just wrapped another Steel 101 Workshop, where you take what you learned in the classroom into the steel mill.
Final Thoughts
Steel equities and steel futures fell hard after news broke earlier this week that the US and Mexico might reach an agreement that would result in the 50% Section 232 tariff coming off Mexican steel. The sharp declines didn’t make much sense, especially if, as some reports indicate, Mexico might agree to a fixed quota. They didn't make sense even if steel flows between the US and Mexico remain unchanged.
Final Thoughts
Even before the news about Mexico, I didn’t want to overstate the magnitude of the change in momentum. As far as we could tell, there hadn’t been a frenzy of new ordering following President Trump’s announcement of 50% Section 232 tariffs. But higher tariffs had unquestionably raised prices for imports, which typically provide the floor for domestic pricing. We’d heard, for example, that prices below $800 per short ton for hot-rolled (HR) coil were gone from the domestic market – even for larger buyers.
Final Thoughts
I want to draw your attention to SMU’s monthly scrap market survey. It’s a premium feature that complements our long-running steel market survey. We’ve been running our scrap survey since late January. And over just that short time, it’s become a valuable way not only for us to assess where scrap prices might go but also to quantify some of the “fuzzy” indicators - like sentiment and flows - that help to put the price in context.
Final Thoughts
I think there is an obvious case for sheet and plate prices going higher from here. That’s because, on a very basic level, the floor for flat-rolled steel prices, which is typically provided by imports, is now significantly higher than it was a week ago.