Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
January 27, 2014
It snowed in Georgia and South Carolina today. Nucor Berkeley put out an announcement that their shipping and sales personnel had been sent home early. I thought it might be a good time to double check the forecast for Mobile for next Tuesday and Wednesday which is where we are holding our next Steel 101 workshop. The forecast is for 70 degrees on Tuesday and 60 degrees on Wednesday.
Going back to the snow in Georgia. My office is about 50 miles Northeast of downtown Atlanta. The forecast for here was flurries with the bulk of the snow forecast to hit south of Atlanta. It is now Tuesday evening and as I look out my window I am gazing at 3″ of snow on the ground.
Every time it snows in Georgia I go back to my first winter here. I had moved down from Minnesota where I had gone to college and lived for 10 years. That first winter here the forecast was for a few inches of snow and people were panicking in their apartments around me. For some reason people in the south can never have two many gallons of milk in their refrigerator when it snows…
The next day I woke up to 4 or 5 inches of snow on the ground and I immediately got in my car and drove to work, which was about six miles away from my apartment. No one was on the road but me and one under-trained police vehicle. I know they were under trained as I watch the police car slow down as it approached a small hill. He was still doing donuts at the bottom of that hill when my little Toyota scampered by.
Of course, being a new guy I didn’t have keys to the office and I was the only one who showed up in that parking lot that day.
Not much has changed in the years since – except now I stay home and watch the crazies on TV who try to imitate that policeman of many years ago.
Snow or no snow our office is open in the morning.
As always we thank you for your business which is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher
John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
It’s once again A Tale of Two Cities in the steel market. Some are almost euphoric about Trump’s victory. Others, some rather bearish, are more focused on the day-to-day market between now and Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
Final Thoughts
One of the perhaps unintentional perks of being a trade journalist is the opportunity to travel and cover an array of industry conferences and events. Some I've attended have been at fun locations, like Palm Springs and Tampa, Fla. Others have been in more practical locations, like SMU’s Steel Summit in Atlanta and American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) and Steel Manufacturers Association (SMA) meetings in Washington, D.C.
Final Thoughts
t this point in the game I think what we can say about Nippon Steel’s proposed buy of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel is that it will go through, it won’t go through, or the outcome will be something new and completely unexpected. Then again, I’m probably still missing a few options.
Final Thoughts
President-elect Donald Trump continues to send shockwaves through the political establishment (again). And steel markets and ferrous scrap markets continue to be, well, anything but shocking. As the French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote in 1849, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." (I thought the quote might have been Yankees catcher Yogi Berra in 1949. Google taught me something new today.)
Final Thoughts
President-elect Donald Trump will officially retake the White House on Jan. 20. I’ve been getting questions about how his administration’s policies might reshape the steel industry and domestic manufacturing. I covered the tumult and norm busting of Trump's first term: Section 232, Section 301, USMCA - and that's just on the trade policy side of things. It's safe to say that we'll have no shortage of news in 2025 when it comes to trade and tariffs.