Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
March 16, 2018
SMU will begin our next flat rolled and plate steel market trends analysis beginning at 8 AM ET tomorrow morning (Monday). Please check your inbox (or SPAM filter) for our invitation to participate in the mid-March process. If you would like to be included in this or future surveys, please send an email to info@SteelMarketUpdate.com.
I will be in the office all this week. Next week, I will be traveling to Chicago as we are hosting one of our sold-out Steel 101 workshops in conjunction with NLMK Portage minimill.
Our next Steel 101 workshop will be on June 5 & 6, 2018, in Memphis, Tenn., and we will be touring two Nucor steel mills: Hickman and Nucor-Yamato. I anticipate we’ll have the registration and details set up on our website early this week. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please send them to info@SteelMarketUpdate.com. If you would like to register, contact Brett Linton at 706-216-2140.
We will have more details about how trading companies and end users are working toward getting exclusions to the Section 232 tariffs, which are scheduled to go into effect on March 23. If you would like to ask questions or need a clarification, please send me an email: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com and I will do my best to get you a prompt response. Lewis Leibowitz has advised me he will be working through the procedures once they are published in the Federal Register (which should happen on Monday).
On top of all of this, there are AD/CVD duties that have been challenged on CORE, and the results are expected in April. We will be working on this, as well.
Plus, union contracts are up in September…
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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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?
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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.
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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.