Final Thoughts

We all know the answer to the first question now. Nippon Steel closed its “partnership” with U.S. Steel earlier this month.

The Nippon Steel deal first made headlines in December 2023 (after news that U.S. Steel was for sale burst into public in August 2023). Then it was a waiting game. Court cases, multiple government reviews, even a “Golden Share.” The transaction had it all.

We’ve gone through an action-packed roller coaster ride. But even if it’s hard to remember now, there were long stretches when nothing happened. At least not that we saw. So it makes sense that people were curious all along as to how the whole thing would play out.

The sale of Evraz NA has been a much quieter affair. Not much was said, at least not publicly. And not much happened, at least not publicly. Then the story came back onto our radar when private equity firm Atlas Holdings announced late last week that it was buying Evraz NA.

Evraz NA has been on the market since August 2022, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of that year. (Michael Cowden’s article on it here has further details.)

But again, since that time, we’ve had little in the way of updates. And then, as tends to happen, Friday afternoon or the weekend rolls around, and all the big news spills over the wires.

At least that is how it’s felt since “Liberation Day” and the ever-changing tariff landscape since then. That said, news breaking on weekends isn’t entirely a Trump 2.0 phenomenon. After all, the news that Cliffs wanted to buy U.S. Steel broke on Aug. 13, 2023 – a Sunday. And news that the Biden administration would reduce tariffs on US allies broke on Oct. 31, 2021 – a Sunday, and Halloween too.

Where do we go from here?

It’s not like we have exactly closed the book on these two deals. (Who knows, there could be more curveballs in store for us.) And I wouldn’t be surprised if we continue to see news break on Fridays, weekends, and holidays. But significant chapters have been turned.

Ultimately, I think what these two deals highlight is a new era of trade. Notice I didn’t add in the word “free” there.

Geopolitical squabbles are complicating the idea of a “global village.” And it looks like governments could have a bigger role to play in business, especially in the steel industry. Steel tariffs don’t just rise from 25% to 50% on their own. You can’t shrug it off as just some wonky stuff that happens in Washington, D.C.

What’s something that could happen on an “average” day in 2025? Well, we’ve seen the aforementioned doubling of tariffs, reciprocal tariffs, pauses on tariffs, pauses on negotiations with a neighbor like Canada, and then things resume again.

Shipping is another issue. Whether it’s potential Mideast conflicts leading to closed shipping lanes or levies on Chinese-flagged vessels, what you pay today to get your steel on a boat could be vastly different tomorrow.

And then we’ve seen two recent examples of reshoring. Appliance makers Whirlpool and GE Appliances have both announced an increased focus on US operations. Is that just noise, or the start of a meaningful trend?

Out of this chaos, perhaps in a year or two, maybe we’ll look back and think how obvious the outlines of the “new normal” were. Heck, we could even have a new USMCA agreement of some kind by then.

That conjecture brings us back to the original question: What’s going on in the market that nobody is talking about? You first.