Final Thoughts
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Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
September 19, 2014
For those who are keeping track I will be in Arkansas tomorrow for the Big River Steel groundbreaking. It will be interesting to see for myself what all the fuss is about… More about the groundbreaking (and maybe some of the fuss) in Tuesday evening’s issue of SMU.
We have also been working on a special report on zinc as we believe the subject will be of keen interest to those of you who are buying galvanized, galvannealed, galfan or other coated products which use zinc to coat hot rolled or cold rolled substrate. We have warned our readers in the past that zinc pricing bears watching in the coming months.
We still have a couple of seats left for our next Steel 101 workshop which will be held in Ft. Wayne, IN on October 7 & 8. We will tour the SDI Butler, IN steel mill as part of our program. You can find our program, pricing and how to register on our website or, you are welcome to contact our offices at: 800-432-3475. We will close registration at the end of this week and start working on our next Steel 101 program which will be held in late January in South Carolina and will include a tour of the Nucor Berkeley steel mill.
I want to thank all of the steel mills who have worked with Steel Market Update and have allowed our Steel 101 training workshop to tour their facilities: NLMK USA, Severstal (both Dearborn – now AK Steel and Columbus – now SDI), SSAB, California Steel, ArcelorMittal Dofasco, Steel Dynamics and Nucor. We hope other mills will consider working with Steel Market Update and our educational program(s) in the future. I
I am going to keep it short this evening. Thank you again for your business which is truly appreciated by all of us at Steel Market Update.
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John Packard
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Final Thoughts
Some of you have told me that the current market feels about as crazy as early 2021 when demand snapped back after the initial outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Others have said it might be more like late February/early March 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine – and, in the process, caused […]
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Final Thoughts
To say we’ve entered a “Brave New World” since Jan. 20 might be an exaggeration, but we’ve definitely entered a different one.
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Final Thoughts
I think it’s fair to say that the last few weeks – and last week especially – have been among the most intense for any of us covering steel (or aluminum).
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Final Thoughts
A look at how SMU survey respondents are reacting to President Trump's recent actions on tariffs.
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Final Thoughts
A lot of the changes basically entail rolling back what I’ll call, for fun, Section 232 Lite. S232 Lite resulted from watering down what I’ll call OG S232 – the one first imposed in March 2018 - with exemptions and exclusions over the years. Now, OG Section 232, is back with its across-the-board 25% tariffs against everyone.