Final Thoughts: The (in)glorious history of snap polls at Steel Summit

Steel, maybe reflecting human nature, sometimes leans toward recency bias – namely, the tendency to assume what’s happening now will continue to happen in the future.

And let’s just say August 2025 turned out to be a very good example of that. Remember? That distant galaxy when lead times were short, when buyers could almost name their price, and when a “Fortress North America” trade policy seemed within reach.

Let’s start with prices. We polled attendees at the opening of Summit last year, as we do every year, about where they thought hot-rolled (HR) coil prices would be the following year. The results are below.

Winner winner, chicken dinner to the 7% who predicted hot band would be more than a grand. And a serving of humble pie for the rest of us who predicted sheet prices, which averaged $815 per short ton at the time, would remain roughly in that bandwidth. Maybe $100/st or so higher if you were bullish. Maybe $100/st or so lower if you were bearish.

And clearly yours truly, who designed the question, didn’t even consider the possibility that HR prices would be closer to $1,200/st. Because I didn’t give folks the opportunity to choose $1,100 or higher, let alone $1,200 or higher. (In my defense, the average price might have been $815/st at the time. But some mills were discounting well into the $700s/st.)

Of course, it was hardly the first time we didn’t exactly ace the forecast test.

In August 2020, when Summit was virtual amid the depths of the pandemic, most people predicted HR prices would be below $400/st a year later. A few brave optimists thought HR prices might crack $550/st.

What actually happened? By the time August 2021 rolled around, you couldn’t get shred for less than $400/st. Prime scrap was at nearly $600/st. And as for HR prices? I think we all remember the story. Demand unexpectedly surged in late 2020 and into 2021. Supply couldn’t keep up. And HR prices shot above the $1,900/st mark. In fact, debate at Summit in 2021, which was back in person, centered around whether HR might hit $2,000/st.

But we learned our lesson about recency bias at least for a little while, right?

Not really. Here are the results from a snap poll at Summit in August 2021.

Most people correctly reasoned HR prices couldn’t hold at ~$2,000/st. But most also assumed HR would still be selling at a four-digit number come August 2022.

What happened in reality? Domestic HR averaged $796/st in August 2022 – a number that would have seemed unreasonably bearish a year earlier.

That’s not to say we don’t get things right some years. In August 2024, the most common response from a Summit snap poll was that HR would be $700-799/st in August 2025 – not too far off that $815/st I mentioned above.

We also correctly called the presidential election in 2024. The Summit crowd predicted Donald Trump would be president again when that wasn’t the same conclusion pollsters were reaching. (Former Vice President Kamala Harris had a narrow lead in most polls.)

So, what will it be this year? Will it be like Summit 2024, when our snap poll looked sharp a year later? Or will we be fantastically wide of the mark, as we were in 2020, 2021, and (to a lesser degree) in 2025?

A lot probably depends on whether trade policy and world events in general occur more or less as expected. Why do I say that?

In 2025, for example, many Summit attendees missed the mark not only on prices but also on politics and trade policy. TACO was a buzzword. And most people predicted Section 232 tariffs would come back down to 25%. (I remember talking to some of you who were sure it would happen before the end of the year.)

And most (67%) also predicted there would be major exemptions to Section 232.

We didn’t ask in the poll question what those exemptions would be. But the general consensus was there would be carve-outs or lower tariffs for Canada and Mexico as progress was made toward a new USMCA agreement. (Obviously, that’s not what happened.)

To be fair to our 2020-21 selves, I don’t think a global pandemic was on anyone’s bingo card in 2019. That’s what former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld might have categorized as an “unknown unknown.” (This quote was widely mocked at the time, way back in 2002. But the guy had a point.)

We arguably had a few of those over the last year too. I definitely didn’t have a war with Iran on my bingo card. And closer to home, who could have predicted at Summit last year that a TV ad sponsored by the Ontario government would throw US-Canada trade talks off course? (Or that remarks by Canada’s prime minister at Davos would have set off what seems to have become almost a Cold War between Washington and Ottawa.) Meanwhile, the domestic flat-rolled steel market, especially in the Great Lakes region, arguably still hasn’t filled the void left by Algoma Steel pivoting away from the US.

But that’s enough from me. What questions would you like to see answered? And what poll questions do you think we should ask? Let us know at smu@crugroup.com. My colleagues and I keep close tabs on that inbox, so we’ll make sure to make a note of any suggestions.

By the way, if you’re reading this and haven’t registered for Summit yet, it’s not too late. You can find the agenda here. The (growing) list of attending companies is here. And you can register here.

Summit has truly become a global event. And we’re looking forward welcoming all of you – whether you’re in from the Gulf Coast or the Midwest, Latin America or Asia, Europe or Africa. We can’t wait to see you in Atlanta soon!

And, hey, don’t worry if you get the snap poll wrong. You’ll be in good company.