Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
March 23, 2016
As we head into the Good Friday and Easter weekend holiday we want to wish everyone an enjoyable time with family and friends. Steel Market Update will not publish a newsletter on Sunday so our next official publication will be on Tuesday evening of next week.
Even so, that should not prevent you for communicating with us over the weekend. We will respond to your calls and we always respond to our emails.
Speaking of emails we have been getting a number of positive comments over the past couple of days.
“SMU Team, happy Thursday, I want to tell you that I treat your reports as my bible. Thank you for your in-depth analysis and diverse topics.” Linda Ortepi, Corporate Buyer-Raw Materials, Kirchoff Automotive.
We also saw a comment this morning from someone on a free trial, “Peter, first of all thank you for article and aggregated data. It certainly helps to explain why HRC has diverged so strongly from long products on the recent pricing trend.” He then went on to ask a question about the classification of one of the long products.
Readers enjoy our newsletter for a wide variety of reasons and we enjoy hearing from you. Recently we heard from a small service center who told us they used our Price Estimator on our website to help them value their inventory at the end of the month. Creative and independent way to keep the banks and bankers happy…
If you enjoy Steel Market Update drop us a line. We would love to hear from you: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com
If for some reason you are not pleased – I want to hear from you so we can address whatever your concern(s) might be.
Please stay safe over the weekend and I will be the one with the bike shorts and helmet zipping around South Florida’s bike paths.
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
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.