Final Thoughts

February 17, 2014

It was a crazy day as all of the government data was not released until 5 PM ET or later – and there was a lot of it. Perhaps the most interesting is the US Department of Commerce “preliminary dumping margins” on oil country tubular goods. Maybe I should restate that – the most interesting part of the OCTG ruling is that the largest exporting country by far – South Korea – did not receive any dumping margins. A number of other countries named in the original complaint received a very minor slap on the hands.

As I sit here in my office at 8 PM on Tuesday evening and review the countries involved and the amount of OCTG they were sending into the United States I have to wonder what will come out of all of this. My understanding is the expense to file these kinds of suits can run well over $1 million. Was it worth it?

The two countries which were hit the hardest were Thailand (118.32 percent) and Vietnam (111.47 percent).

According to the US DOC release in 2013 the countries referenced in the suit had the following import values for OCTG: India = $174.4 million (55.29 percent), South Korea = $818 million (no dumping margins found), the Philippines = $54.5 million (8.9 percent margins), Saudia Arabia = $71.5 million (2.92 percent), Taiwan = $79.5 million (2.65 percent), Thailand = $37 million (118.32 percent), Turkey = $107.5 million (4.87 percent), Ukraine = $87.3 million (5.31 percent ) and Vietnam = $110.2 million (111.47 percent).

Added together, the countries with some form of penalty shipped a total of $721.9 million compared to South Korea’s $818 million.

We will have more analysis on the OCTG decision from others within the industry in coming issues of SMU.

If you have an opinion on the ruling please send us an email at: info@SteelMarketUpdate.com

As mentioned in an earlier article we will produce another Premium Level supplement newsletter some time tomorrow as we look to delve deeper on a couple of the items in this evening’s newsletter. We will have another Premium Level supplement at the end of the week as we conclude our latest flat rolled market analysis through our survey.

A reminder that our next Steel 101 workshop will be held in early May and will include a tour of the Severstal Dearborn fully integrated steel mill. Many of the fantastic photos of our past Steel 101 groups were taken during our last tour of the Severstal Dearborn facility. We highly recommend this workshop and tour to anyone who is interested in learning more about the steel industry. You can find more information on our website or you can contact our office at: info@SteelMarketUpdate.com or by phone: 800-432-3475.

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