Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
July 24, 2015
In just five weeks the hoard will be arriving in Atlanta and making their way to the Atlanta Airport Marriott Gateway Hotel which is located next to the Georgia International Convention Center where our 5th Steel Summit Conference will be held on September 1st and 2nd. We don’t know what the final numbers will be quite yet. All we know is that our 5th Steel Summit Conference will be the largest, most expensive to produce and (in our opinion) the finest group of speakers assembled to discuss the risks, opportunities and forecast for the industry and related industries as we move into calendar year 2016.
This will also be the first conference where Steel Market Update has contracted to have an Events “App” to assist our attendees in networking, keeping track of changes, knowing where to find exhibitors and sponsors and to improve on the over-all conference experience. We will roll out the App (SMU Events) this week to our speakers, sponsors and exhibitors and we will roll it out for all of the attendees early next week (August 3rd). The App will be able to be downloaded through your Smart phones (iPhone, Samsung, etc.) store (such as iTunes for the iPhone) and will be free to the public. However, to access the content for our Steel Summit Conference you will need to log into the App and we will provide instructions on how to do that to our attendees. For everyone else it will be a nice icon on your phone but won’t have much value until you attend one of our conferences…
A special thank you to our sponsors: Steel Dynamics, Cargill, Magic Coil Products, Alliance Steel and Kenwal as well as our exhibitors: Association of Steel Distributors and Fabricators & Manufacturers Association. We do have a few sponsorship and exhibition space available. You can find details on our website in the Steel Summit Conference pages (click on the sponsor tab) or you can contact our office at: 800-432-3475.
Registration is still open for our Steel Summit Conference as well as our next Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making and Market Fundamentals workshop in Davenport, Iowa in early October.
All Steel Market Update member (subscriber) companies are eligible for a $100 per person discount on all workshops and our conference. If you have questions please let us know what they may be: info@SteelMarketUpdate.com.
For those of you expecting to hear about #bonvoyage it will be later this month as the vessel is in the process of being changed. I hope to have more details by Tuesday evening’s newsletter. What for information on Twitter @SMUsteel or on our blog on our website.
If you enjoy SMU please let others in the industry know about us, our newsletter, our workshops and our conference (soon to be conferences).
As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher
John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Final Thoughts
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.
Final Thoughts
Another presidential election cycle has come to an end. If you’re anything like me, part of you is just happy you no longer need to unsubscribe or “text STOP to opt-out” from the onslaught of political text messages this cycle produced.
Final Thoughts
With the US presidential election decided, ‘wait and see’ has quickly turned into ‘we’re about to find out.’ Following Donald Trump’s victory, I had a chance to sit down with Kevin Dempsey, president and CEO of the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI). He gave his thoughts on what he thought we might see in Trump’s second term in office, and what it means for steel.