Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
November 24, 2014
First, I want to wish everyone in the United States a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday with family and friends. Steel Market Update will not publish on Thursday but will return to our normal schedule on Sunday evening.
Our offices will be open both on Wednesday and Friday of this week but will be closed on Thanksgiving day.
A note that I will be speaking at the HARDI conference in San Antonio, Texas during the first weekend in December. After that we have a private sales consulting workshop we are producing for a service center. If your company has an interest in one-on-one workshops please contact me at: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com.
Our next Steel 101 workshop will be held in South Carolina on January 20-21, 2015. Details can be found on our website. Registration is open and a tour of the Nucor Berkeley steel mill is part of our program.
I want to welcome our newest members to the SMU community. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions please do not hesitate to contact our offices: info@SteelMarketUpdate.com or by phone: 800-432-3475. Many articles begin as one of our readers asks a question or makes a suggestion.
As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher
John Packard
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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.