Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
December 18, 2015
This will be a busy week – at least the beginning of the week. We have the US Department of Commerce scheduled to release Preliminary Determinations on Heavy Walled Rectangular Welded Carbon Pipes and Tubes from Turkey on Monday. On Tuesday (vote will be on Monday) the US DOC is scheduled to release antidumping (AD) Preliminary Determinations on corrosion resistant steels (galvanized/Galvalume). The CORE announcement will be a critical one for the domestic steel industry and will most likely clear a path (provide a road map) for the cold rolled and hot rolled AD determinations to follow. Our expectation is for China to be hit hard while other countries will be not so much (or none at all).
This is also the week of Christmas and at the end of next week is New Year’s Eve. Both of these events will impact our publishing schedule. We will publish again on Tuesday, December 22nd and then we will not publish another Executive level issue until the following Tuesday, December 29th unless something happens that needs to be covered and brought to the attention of our customers. We will not publish on Thursday, December 31, 2015 and will have a limited issue on the following Sunday (end of month data), January 3, 2016.
A reminder, we have a few spots open for our next Steel 101 workshop which will be held in Starkville, Mississippi and will include a tour of the SDI Columbus steel mill. The dates for the workshop are January 19-20, 2016. You can find details on our website or you are welcome to contact our office: 800-432-3475.
If you are planning on taking an extended holiday over the next week or two, please enjoy your friends and family and be safe. We are looking forward to seeing you again in the New Year.
As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
Happy Holidays.
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.)