Analysis
June 23, 2026
Final Thoughts
Written by Ethan Bernard
The way we deliver Final Thoughts is updating on Friday. This made me take a walk down memory lane to one of the first Final Thoughts I wrote at SMU back in February 2023.
It’s a testament to how different the trade landscape looks today. However, there were cracks long before Donald J. Trump started his second term and announced “Liberation Day” last year.
From that Final Thoughts on Feb. 26, 2023:
Sometimes it’s hard to know who your friends are. What starts off as a simple disagreement escalates. Things can soon spin out of control. And that’s just for people. When dealing with nation-states like the US and Mexico, things get a bit more complex, and the stakes a whole lot higher.
At the beginning of February, Ternium Mexico president César A. Jiménez was touting the benefits of “friend-shoring” at SMU’s Tampa Steel Conference. He said that the USMCA area is perhaps the most stable and balanced in terms of supply/demand in steel production.
Still, the article goes on to detail a letter from 13 US senators complaining about “unfair” steel imports from Mexico to then-US Trade Representative Katherine Tai and then-Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
This and subsequent actions show that the fraught current negotiations ahead of the USMCA joint review didn’t come out of a vacuum.
However, the notion of “friend-shoring” seems a far cry from where we are today. We have President Trump threatening not to renew the agreement, and Canada eyeing a pivot to Europe.
Trade barriers, long thought to have permanently fallen since the fall of the Soviet Union, have been rebuilt in an awful hurry. And the push towards globalization and free trade has stalled.
This is looking less like a bump in the road than a structural change. And where things go from here seems impossible to predict beyond not just snapping back to the status quo.
Adaptation
In the same way that we adapt to the changing times (AI, anyone?), we know all of you have to be flexible in the face of changing market conditions.
For example, SMU Editor-in-Chief Michael Cowden has often written about current tight market conditions and the difficulty many are finding in procuring spot tons.
Recently, when I sat down with Hascall Steel’s Ava Hascall, I got the perspective of an independent service center. While most of their business has been concentrated in the Midwest, market conditions have brought new orders from different regions.
They are now fielding orders from places like Texas and California, with the customers often willing to foot the heightened freight fees, she told SMU.
Getting on customers’ radars may be more important than usual as firms seek to secure tons and explore new options. Could this alter supply chains, or is it just a momentary blip? All we know is that things are changing faster and faster, and you have to be pretty nimble to keep up.
Steel Summit 2026
While I wrote that Final Thoughts over three years ago, big changes could be up ahead in the next couple of months, just in time for SMU’s Steel Summit in Atlanta, Aug. 24-26.
While there might not be clarity about the USMCA, we’ll at least have a couple more pieces of the puzzle. Or, could there be a surprise agreement ahead of the conference? Post-Liberation Day, it’s probably best not to predict.
And, as for demand, will hot-rolled coil prices keep rocketing up, or will the rally burn out? Again, that’s above our paygrade, but we can’t wait to see you in August to compare notes.
