Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
October 4, 2019
I will be out of the office this entire week traveling first to Cincinnati as we conduct our sold-out Steel 101 workshop on Tuesday and Wednesday. Later in the week I will be traveling to Minnesota (where I see temperatures are supposed to be in the 30’s for highs) for a Board of Trustees meeting for Hamline University.
On Monday, SMU will send out invitations to participate in our early October flat rolled and plate steel market trends survey. Invitations will go out at 8 a.m. ET. If you receive an invitation, please take a few minutes to answer the first question at the end of the email, which will then take you to the entire questionnaire. If you used to get an invitation, and for some reason they have stopped – check your SPAM folder.
If you would like to be added to the invitation list, please send your request to info@SteelMarketUpdate.com.
We will send out our Service Center Inventories and Shipments “Flash Report” on Monday. There are some surprises contained in the report, which is provided only to data providers. The full report, which is provided to both data providers and our Premium level members, will be available on Oct. 14. If you are a service center who inventories prime flat rolled or plate steel products in the United States, and you would like to participate in our monthly analysis by providing your company’s data on a confidential basis, please contact me at John@SteelMarketUpdate.com or Estelle.Tran@crugroup.com. If you are an Executive level member and you would like to receive our breakdown of Service Center Shipments and Inventories data, please contact Paige Mayhair at Paige@SteelMarketUpdate.com
Registration is open for our January 2020 Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals Workshop, which will be held in Ontario, Calif. (Los Angeles area) on Jan. 7-8. Included will be a tour of the California Steel Industries (CSI) steel mill. Details can be found on our website: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com/Events/Steel101
As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, President & CEO
John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Never have I been more certain in declaring that those in the steel industry are less certain now than they thought they’d be at this point before the election.
Final Thoughts
“Trump took to Twitter.” That was a familiar story lead in Trump 1.0. Now it’s “Trump took to Truth Social (or X)." The latest example: President-elect Donald Trump on Monday evening said he was “totally against” U.S. Steel being acquired by Nippon Steel in a post on Truth Social.
Final Thoughts
And so it begins (again). Not to be outdone by Thanksgiving, President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs of 25% on all imports from Canada and Mexico. He also threatened to hit all imports from China with tariffs of 10% - an amount that would come on top of a boatload of pre-existing duties and tariffs.
Final Thoughts
“We’ll always have Paris,” as the famous line in Casablanca goes. And this month, the global steel industry did as well. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Steel Committee met in the City of Lights earlier this month. There was also a meeting of the Global Forum addressing excess steel capacity.
Final Thoughts
It’s once again A Tale of Two Cities in the steel market. Some are almost euphoric about Trump’s victory. Others, some rather bearish, are more focused on the day-to-day market between now and Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.