Final Thoughts

SMU published an article in Tuesday evening’s issue about the comments made by General John Adams on national security and the need for steel. The title of the article was “General Goes Nuclear in Support of Section 232.” We received a number of comments from that article wanting to know if we had fact-checked what the general had to say and another disputing some of the assertions he made. The general is a staunch supporter of the Section 232 investigation and he was lobbying to get the president to make a decision (preferably in favor). With the election of Donald Trump and the selection of his cabinet and other officials, such as Trade Representative Lighthizer, there have been a lot of moving parts concerning trade. Just today, Whirlpool asked the International Trade Commission to include 50 percent duties in addition to quotas on ALL foreign-produced washers in its final safeguard recommendation, after the ITC voted unanimously in a Section 201 case that imports of large residential washers hurt the domestic industry. I could rename our newsletter “Trade Today” with all of the news coming from NAFTA negotiations, South Korea negotiations, antidumping and countervailing duty reviews, circumvention cases and Section 337. We feel that much of this is important to our readers, but we do not want to place ourselves in the position of specifically taking sides. Our goal has been to try to provide as much information as possible, link to other sources of good information, and then let you, the reader, make your own decisions. (One source I highly recommend for up-to-the-minute details is World Trade Online.)

I was listening to the Steel Dynamics earnings conference call this morning. Actually, I had the conference call going in the background as I tried to do three or four other things at the same time. I think it’s called multi-tasking. The thing about multi-tasking is there are times you don’t get to really concentrate on just one thing and follow it through to completion. Anyway, I could hear Mark Millett in the background answering questions about SDI’s latest quarter. Then I heard a familiar voice, Chuck Bradford, and he asked a question of Mr. Millett about the export of Chinese ferrous scrap and if SDI had any feeling for the quality of the material. There are many people in the industry who believe that Chinese scrap and exports of Chinese scrap could well be a major influence on future scrap prices around the world. Mr. Millett told Chuck that he didn’t have an answer to his question since SDI has never bought any Chinese scrap.