SMU Survey: Steel Buyer Sentiment Indices soften

Every other week, we survey thousands of industry executives on how they rate their company’s chances of success today, as well as three to six months in the future. The results are used to calculate our Current and Future Steel Buyers’ Sentiment Indices, metrics tracked since 2008.

Current Sentiment 

SMU’s Current Buyers’ Sentiment Index declined one point this week to +32, the second lowest reading seen this year (Figure 1). For reference, over the past five years the lowest this index has been was +30 (October 2024 and June 2025). Sentiment has trended lower since peaking in February and has consistently held at or below year-ago levels since March. Sentiment has averaged +44 across the first seven months of this year. This time last year it was marginally higher at +40.

Future Sentiment

Future Sentiment fell nine points to +49, shifting from a four-month high to a two-month low (Figure 2). Prior to this week, Future Sentiment had shown modest improvement for two months, recovering from the near-three-year low of +46 seen in May. It has remained at or below 2024 levels since March. Future Sentiment has averaged +57 so far this year and was considerably higher one year ago at +66.

What SMU survey respondents had to say:

“Demand will pick up and imports will not be in play.”

“Depends on many factors; the current administration is unpredictable and causing havoc on future business planning.”

“There is a significant backlog of projects in our industry that are scheduled to begin in the third and fourth quarter.”

“Things should open up after all the tariff stuff settles down.”

“Once the reciprocal tariffs are settled maybe we can move forward.”

“Our business always seems to do acceptable or better.”

Sentiment trends

Our Sentiment Indices can be analyzed on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis to highlight broader trends and eliminate survey-to-survey variation.

The Current Sentiment 3MMA declined for the seventh consecutive survey this week to +35.13, the lowest measure seen in nearly five years (Figure 3, left). Recall that back in mid-April the 3MMA reached a nine-month high of +53.97 after trending upwards since the beginning of the year.

After briefly increasing in early July, Future Sentiment 3MMA resumed its downward slide this week, easing to +50.28. This average is marginally higher than the late June 3MMA of +50.11, which was the lowest measure seen since October 2020 (Figure 3, right).

About the SMU Steel Buyers’ Sentiment Index

The SMU Steel Buyers’ Sentiment Index measures the attitude of buyers and sellers of flat-rolled steel products in North America. It is a proprietary product developed by Steel Market Update for the North American steel industry. Tracking steel buyers’ sentiment is helpful in predicting their future behavior. A link to our methodology is here. If you would like to participate in our survey, please contact us at info@steelmarketupdate.com.