Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
December 16, 2019
We are quickly moving toward the Christmas and Hanukkah Holidays with Hanukkah beginning Sunday evening and Christmas next Wednesday. Which reminds me, I think I have some shopping to get done (I haven’t started yet). Am I the only one?
My expectation is for the markets to calm down over the next couple of weeks as we get through Christmas, Hanukkah and the New Year. Wow, it’s going to be 2020 – another election year – YIKES!
I remember our 2016 SMU Steel Summit Conference when our attendees overwhelmingly predicted a Donald J. Trump victory. You will have the opportunity to weigh in next August to see if our conference can go two for two.
What a difference a year makes…. During the first week of December 2018, we conducted our normal survey and found 72 percent of the service centers reporting their company as dropping spot pricing (we were in the long decline that we saw throughout most of 2019). In 2017 the mills had just announced price increases ($30/ton) and 44 percent of the service centers were raising spot pricing. In 2016 there had been four increases over a short period of time totaling $140 per ton, and 90 percent of the distributors reported raising spot prices to their customers. If you want to know what pricing did, you can find that information in the pricing section of our website. If you need help in using our pricing tools, you can ask info@SteelMarketUpdate.com and we will help you.
As I look ahead over the next few years, I see huge technological changes coming to the steel industry. The industry is moving to limit its carbon footprint. A couple of mills have already announced they will be going with wind or solar projects to power their mills. Other technologies are being installed at USS Mon Valley, and of course we have many new steel mills under construction. The next few years will be a fun time to be in the steel industry.
I don’t normally write about a competitor to SMU, but Joe Innace of Platts is retiring at the end of this year (officially; he recently penned his last article for Platts). Joe has been a good friend and supporter of Steel Market Update for many years. I want to wish him a healthy, happy and long retirement. Now I’ll take bets on how long it will be before he gets back involved with the industry in some form. When it’s in your blood, it’s hard to leave (Joe is younger than me, so I know).
Another note to let everyone know we will publish on Thursday and Sunday, and then we will not publish again until Sunday, Dec. 29. We will not publish our pricing for next week until the 29th.
We will be closing registration for the Ontario, California Steel 101 workshop at the end of this week. After Friday, registrations will need to be done by phone and will be subject to availability. Our next workshop will be in Indiana on March 31 and April 1, 2020. We will be touring the NLMK Portage EAF steel mill.
As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us here 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.