Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
February 1, 2019
It’s Super Bowl Sunday and I expect everyone’s focus is on the game and not on business. Mine, and my team’s, will be as well. Here’s hoping for a great game and that the best team wins (without any help from the referees). Because of the game, and the desire for not only your family but my SMU team wanting to watch the game, I will keep my comments short and sweet.
We will begin our early February flat rolled and plate steel market trends analysis on Monday morning at 8 a.m. ET. If you receive an invitation, please take a few moments to answer the first question, which will be located at the end of the email invitation. If you used to get invitations and you haven’t seen one in a while, check your SPAM folder for emails received around 8 a.m. ET.
We will also begin canvassing the service center segment of the industry as we measure flat rolled and plate steel inventories. Our data providers will receive our “Flash” report on Friday of this week. We are not sharing this data outside of our data providers at this time. If you would like to inquire about becoming a data provider, please contact me at 800-432-3475 or by email: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com
As of the end of January, we had four times as many executives registered for the 2019 SMU Steel Summit Conference as we had this time last year registered for the 2018 conference. We ended up with 912 attendees last year…
As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, President & CEO
John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Final Thoughts
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.