Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
May 7, 2018
The final circumvention decision on Vietnam is due tomorrow, but will not be announced to the public until Thursday. We will have a full article and comments from trade attorney Lewis Leibowitz in Thursday evening’s issue of Steel Market Update.
The recent Court of Appeals case may have some impact on the Vietnam final determination. It is not yet clear what will happen.
One area of concern is determining the origin of material. There is going to be a lot of discussion about what processing is “significant” and what is “minor” as that could impact the country of origin. SMU expects there will be complaints against (for example) OCTG coming out of Korea that is made from Chinese substrate.
Earlier this week, we sent out a link (same link as shown below) to all of our members asking for a few moments of your time so that we can learn more about our clients, as well as what we are doing right and what we could do better as we expand and look to improve our products and services. Please, if you have not already answered, Click here to give us your feedback. Thank you in advance for your time and insights.
Our Steel 101 workshop is totally sold out and we have a waiting list. A special thank you to Nucor for allowing us to tour their Arkansas plants at Hickman and Nucor-Yamato. I am looking forward to announcing our next workshop, which will be in either late September or early October at a mill we have not toured before. Stay tuned for details.
There is still plenty of room for more attendees for this year’s SMU Steel Summit Conference. We are closing in on 450 registrations on our way to 800 executives. This will be a tremendous networking opportunity for anyone associated with the flat rolled, plate or pipe and tube markets. If you have not been to a Steel Summit Conference, you are in for a treat. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at 800-432-3475 or info@SteelMarketUpdate.com and I will do my best to twist your arm… Details and registration can be found at www.SteelMarketUpdate.com/events/steel-summit or by calling our office at 772-932-7538.
Tim Triplett and I will be at the Metals Industry Boy Scout Dinner at the Hyatt in downtown Chicago on Thursday. I spoke with Lori Hahn of Steel Dynamics earlier today and she told me there are still some tables and individual tickets available. Click on the sidebar ad in this newsletter to find more information and to register.
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!