Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
June 29, 2016
I happen to be traveling this week and weekend. I am in Maine where in my youth my family used to vacation. Maine is a beautiful state to visit if you have not been here.
I want to take a moment to wish all of my U.S.A. readers a safe and happy 4th of July weekend. We will all have a lot to reflect on with this being an election year and, well the “interesting” candidates we get to choose a president from this year.
To my customers in the rest of the world who are fretting about our election I remind you of the words attributed to Winston Churchill of England (although my research is suggesting that he never actually made this statement), “Winston Churchill once famously observed that Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else.”
As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update. We will publish our next issue of SMU on Tuesday, July 5th due to the 4th of July Holiday here in the U.S.A.
John Packard, Publisher
John Packard
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Final Thoughts
“We’ll always have Paris,” as the famous line in Casablanca goes. And this month, the global steel industry did as well. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Steel Committee met in the City of Lights earlier this month. There was also a meeting of the Global Forum addressing excess steel capacity.
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.)