Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
November 28, 2018
We had a great webinar on Wednesday, despite some technical glitches. I am looking forward to making webinars a standard practice for Steel Market Update. We do not yet have a date/subject set up for the next webinar.
I am traveling this weekend and early next week. I will be speaking on Sunday morning in Austin, Texas, and then on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week I will be in Atlanta. The Austin trip is for the annual HARDI conference, where Josh Spoores of CRU and I will be speaking.
I was speaking with a service center executive who was reporting lead times as being slightly extended at one of his suppliers. If you are seeing the same thing, could you send me a note? You can reach me at John@SteelMarketUpdate.com
If you have questions about becoming a subscriber to Steel Market Update, wish to renew or would like to upgrade your current membership from Executive to Premium, please contact Paige Mayhair at 724-720-1011.
Tonight is the last issue for the month of November. Sunday will be the first issue for December. On Monday of next week, we will begin our flat rolled and plate steel market trends analysis and we will begin our November service center inventories data collection. Check your inbox around 8 a.m. ET on Monday.
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.