Final Thoughts

I was advis ed today that Nucor had reduced their pricing on beams by $40 per ton in order to compete with foreign beam offers. The question then became what are the mills doing to blunt the impact of foreign steel offers of flat rolled products into the United States? As we reported on Tuesday, US Steel is attempting to stem the price erosion which has occurred since the beginning of November. Meanwhile, buyers seem to be back to sitting on their hands waiting to see what happens next. Lead times are relatively short and inventories appear to be higher than they have been in awhile.

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