Galvanized steel prices have skyrocketed by more than $200 per ton since August, leaving wholesalers who serve the HVAC market to wonder how much higher the price can possibly go before it begins to cut into demand. On a conference call this morning, members of the Heating, Air Conditioning & Refrigeration Distributors International (HARDI) said […]
Demand remains strong even as galvanized steel prices have topped $900 per ton, reported members of the Heating, Air Conditioning & Refrigeration Distributors International in a conference call this morning. But the HARDI members—wholesalers who serve the HVAC market—expressed concern about the tight availability of galvanized steel and fear of running low on supplies. “We are […]
California Steel Industries notified customers on Monday, Sept. 21, that it has raised prices on its flat rolled products by $60-70 per ton ($3.00-3.50/cwt) due to changing market conditions. Effective immediately on all unconfirmed orders, prices for hot rolled, P&O and galvanized have increased by a minimum of $60 per ton, while cold rolled is […]
U.S apparent steel supply remained flat from June to July, up 0.8 percent to 6.98 million net tons, according to the latest U.S. Department of Commerce and American Iron and Steel Institute data. While June and July supply levels have both shown improvement, recall that April and May were the two lowest levels seen in […]
Trade attorney and Steel Market Update contributor Lewis Leibowitz offers the following update on events in Washington: For international trade and politics, it’s hard to beat the past week. We saw numerous developments in the trade field—I’ll discuss a few of them: (1) an avalanche of lawsuits challenging the “Section 301” tariffs against $200 billion […]
As of Friday, the National Interagency Fire Center was reporting that 80 large fires were still burning across the western United States. Varying reports indicate the flames have consumed anywhere from 4-7 million acres so far and at least 34 people have died. The death and destruction is heartbreaking, no doubt. Viewed in terms of […]
By CRU Prices Analyst Estelle Tran, from CRU’s Global Steel Trade Service A combination of increased seasonal demand, low service center inventories, unplanned outages, spike in scrap prices and government restrictions on Brazilian slab imports have added fuel to the usual seasonal uptick and turned it into a surge. After reaching a bottom in mid-August, […]
Importers of steel and aluminum who have been critical of the Commerce Department’s handling of Section 232 exclusion requests have found an ally in the Government Accountability Office. In a report released Tuesday, the GAO called for Commerce to improve and speed up the process it uses to review tariff exclusion requests. The report noted […]
The U.S. dollar weakened against 12 of the 16 steel and raw materials trading nation currencies in the last 30 days and against 11 in the last 90 days, which is similar to the declines that we reported for June and July. The biggest changes in the last 90 days were in the value of […]
National level import reports do a good job of measuring the overall market pressure caused by the imports of individual products. The downside is that there are huge regional differences. This report examines hot rolled coil imports by region through July 2020. In July, hot rolled imports were down by 15.0 percent at the national […]
National level import reports do a good job of measuring the overall market pressure caused by the imports of individual products. The downside is that there are huge regional differences. This report examines cold rolled imports by region through July 2020. In July, cold rolled imports were down by 13.8 percent at the national level, […]
National level import reports do a good job of measuring the overall market pressure caused by the imports of individual products. The downside is that there are huge regional differences. This report examines hot-dipped galvanized imports by region through July 2020. In July, HDG imports were down by 12.1 percent at the national level, but […]
National level import reports do a good job of measuring the overall market pressure caused by the imports of individual products. The downside is that there are huge regional differences. This report examines other metallic coated imports (mainly Galvalume) by region through July 2020. In July, OMC imports were down by 1.3 percent at the […]
National level import reports do a good job of measuring the overall market pressure caused by the imports of individual products. The downside is that there are huge regional differences. This report examines coiled plate imports by region through July 2020. In July, coiled plate imports were down by 34.2 percent at the national level, […]
National level import reports do a good job of measuring the overall market pressure caused by the imports of individual products. The downside is that there are huge regional differences. This report examines cut-to-length plate imports by region through July 2020. In July, CTL plate imports were down by 47.8 percent at the national level, […]
JSW Steel USA will idle its Baytown, Texas, plate mill, citing recent changes to quotas of semifinished steel imports from Brazil. “While on the journey to becoming a ‘melted and manufactured in the USA’ company, JSW utilized the imported slab quota system put in place by the administration to support operations at our Baytown, Texas, […]
The U.S. has reversed its position on imposing tariffs on Canadian aluminum imports. The U.S Trade Representative said in a statement on Sept. 15, “After consultations with the Canadian government, the United States has determined that trade in non-alloyed, unwrought aluminum is likely to normalize in the last four months of 2020, with imports declining sharply […]
We can all agree steel prices are on an upward trajectory right now. How high they will go, and for how long, is another matter. SMU’s check of the market on Monday and Tuesday puts the benchmark price for hot rolled steel at $580 per ton, up about $40 in the past week. U.S. Steel, […]
The global steel industry is one of the biggest culprits in the climate change debate, responsible for some 7 percent of harmful carbon dioxide emissions each year. Every ton of steel produced in 2018 released 1.85 tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Thus the steel industry is under enormous pressure to reduce its carbon footprint. Fortunately, […]
The Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis (SIMA) system is receiving an upgrade courtesy of the Department of Commerce. A final rule was adopted on Sept. 11 that will modernize the SIMA system and set up a new online platform on the Commerce website. “These significant improvements to SIMA will enable Commerce and the public to […]
Trade attorney and Steel Market Update contributor Lewis Leibowitz offers the following update on events in Washington: New regulations published Sept. 11 in the Federal Register require steel importers to know and reveal the country where steel was “melted and poured” no matter how much the steel was processed thereafter. Steel importers have long been […]
Total rolled product imports in August were down by 28.0 percent on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis. This was the 10th consecutive month in which imports were down by more than 20 percent compared to the same time last year. This early look at August’s import volume is based on Commerce Department license data […]
Steel Market Update is pleased to share this Premium content with Executive members. The information below is excerpted from the full article, which is available to Premium subscribers on SMU’s website. For information on upgrading to a Premium-level subscription, email Info@SteelMarketUpdate.com. Total rolled product imports in September were down by 28.7 percent on a three-month […]
Steel import permit applications for August totaled 1,394,000 net tons—a 30.5 percent decrease from the 2,006,000 permit tons recorded in July and a 48.4 percent decrease from the July final imports total of 2,703,000, reported the American Iron and Steel Institute, based on the Commerce Department’s most recent Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis (SIMA) data. […]
This week’s comparison of foreign and domestic hot rolled prices shows that U.S-produced steel continues to hold a price advantage over foreign imports, but that price advantage is lessening due to the rapid rise in domestic prices, according to SMU and CRU indices. The price differentials between domestic HRC compared to foreign imports had widened over […]
Recently released Census data shows final July steel imports totaled 2.70 million net tons, up 93 percent from June due to the quarterly reset on semifinished import quotas. This final July figure is just 5,995 tons higher than the preliminary import figures SMU reported one week ago. Finished imports in July totaled 1.43 million tons, […]
Will it be “Steelmaggedon” or simply new capacity replacing old? Bank of America analyst Timna Tanners, who trademarked the term, still believes an abundance of new capacity will come online in the next few years, despite the COVID pandemic, oversupplying the market and dooming steel prices. Many of the other executives who spoke during SMU’s […]
What a difference a single month can make. Most respondents to SMU’s questionnaire this week see the mills collecting their last price increase and expect them to hike prices again sometime this month. As one executive commented: “There’s been a complete flip in the market from just 30 days ago. We went from discussions about […]
Editor’s note: SMU Contributor David Feldstein is president of Rock Trading Advisors. David has over 20 years of financial market trading experience and has been active in the ferrous futures space for eight years. David earned an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with concentrations in economics, statistics and analytical finance. […]
Steel prices gained momentum in August as demand improved and the mills announced a new round of price increases. As of last week, Steel Market Update’s hot rolled price average had risen to $485 per ton, up $45 in just two weeks from the mid-month low, and has since topped the $500 mark. Scrap prices were flat […]