• Skip to main content

    Product

    At the Root of the Controversy at the WTO—Antidumping

    Written by Lewis Leibowitz


    Trade attorney and Steel Market Update contributor Lewis Leibowitz offers the following update on events in Washington:

    The World Trade Organization has had a rough couple of years. The United States arranged the destruction of the WTO Appellate Body because the U.S. alleges that the final tribunal of the WTO dispute settlement system has overstepped its authority. Among other things, a February report of the U.S. Trade Representative accuses the Appellate Body of usurping the right of WTO members to make definitive interpretations of the agreements that established the WTO and the trading rules that members are obliged to obey. This is a serious accusation, but whether it’s true or not has been lost in the dueling narratives that are so pervasive these days.

    Lewis Leibowitz, SMU Contributor

    Lewis Leibowitz

    Read more from Lewis Leibowitz

    Latest in Product

    Cliffs shifts customers to index-linked, take-or-pay contracts

    Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. expects to earn more from the repricing of contract tonnage than it previously projected. The Cleveland-based steelmaker raised its estimate for the earnings benefit of the repricing to about $850 million from about $500 million. The company also said negotiations for 2027 contracts are progressing better than expected. More than half of the 2027 renewal process was complete as of Cliffs' third-quarter earnings call on Monday morning.

    Cleveland-Cliffs postpones Burns Harbor furnace reline to 2028

    Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. has rescheduled the planned reline of the C blast furnace at its Burns Harbor steel mill in northwest Indiana from mid-2027 to April 2028, company executives said. The delay allows the Cleveland-based steelmaker to keep the furnace, which has annual capacity of ~2.2 million short tons, operating while steel prices and demand remain favorable for mills, they said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call on Monday.

    Brazilian pig iron trade with US stuck in doldrums

    The pig iron trade from Brazil into the US has been lackluster over the last month with minimal activity. Many players in the trade thought activity would increase after the International Iron Metallics Assn (IIMA) meeting in Chicago earlier this month, but it has not materialized so far. Part of the reason could be the US scrap buy for October stretched out longer than usual, as buyers and sellers haggled over price. Now that prices settled upward, there may be different ideas on where pig iron prices should settle.

    Drilling activity holds in the US, eases in Canada

    The latest tally of active drilling rigs held steady in the US and slowed in Canada this week, according to oil and gas rig count data published by Baker Hughes. The US rig count remained unchanged at 603 rigs this week, maintaining a 17-month high. Compared to this time last year, there are 55 more rigs in operation today. Canada’s count decreased by five to 217 rigs this week, slowing for the first time in four weeks. Still, activity is up compared to the same week of 2025, with 19 more rigs operating today.