Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
November 16, 2018
Thursday is Thanksgiving here in the United States and Steel Market Update will not publish on Thursday. We will publish our normal Tuesday issue and then we will publish a limited edition on Sunday, Nov. 25. I know I am looking forward to having a couple days in a row “off” as I get ready for more travel during the month of December.
We will conduct our mid-November flat rolled and plate steel market trends analysis this week. Invitations will go out around 7:30 a.m. ET on Monday as this is a short week. We will collect responses through Wednesday and we will report on a portion of the results in Sunday evening’s newsletter.
We have plenty of seats available for our end of January (29-30) Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals workshop, which will be held in Starkville, Miss., and we will tour the SDI Columbus steel mill. For more information about the agenda, instructors, hotel and cost, please go to www.SteelMarketUpdate.com/Events/Steel101
As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, President & CEO
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.)
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.