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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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!