We received the following comments from a member of the financial investment community regarding the suits just filed by the domestic mills alleging the transformation of hot rolled to cold rolled or coated from China in Vietnam was just a way for China to circumvent U.S. trade duties. The complaint states that the transformation of […]
A note to our Premium level customers, the Power Point presentation of last week’s flat rolled steel market trends analysis has been placed on the website. We will have a Premium level newsletter coming out on Monday as well. If you have any questions or need assistance to find our survey results please contact Brett@SteelMarketUpdate.com […]
Steel Market Update reached out to trade attorney Lewis Leibowitz and to review the Vietnam CORE (corrosion resistant steels = galvanized and Galvalume) filing by California Steel and Steel Dynamics. The filing was made by the law firm Schagrin Associates. I only have time for a brief response after quickly reviewing the Schagrin filing asking […]
We might as well get the debate started. The circumvention complaints against Vietnam have prompted comments and a healthy discussion is needed as the industry tries to wrap its collective mind around the facts of the latest request of the US Department of Commerce to stop Vietnamese exports of cold rolled and coated steels. We […]
Earlier today California Steel and Steel Dynamics filed a Request for Circumvention Ruling with the U.S. Department of Commerce against Vietnam. One of the trading companies Steel Market Update spoke to this afternoon termed the complaint a “game breaker” for steel trading companies importing foreign steel who will now shy away from any country that […]
Last summer the U.S. Congress passed the ENFORCE Act. The ENFORCE Act provides a path for U.S. companies to ask for investigations of foreign products (and the importer of record) when a question arises as to evasion of duties through misrepresentation of the product/source country, etc. Last week Wheatland Tube became the first company to […]
The Steel Market Update (SMU) Steel Buyers Sentiment Index dropped 14 points since we last measured Sentiment at the beginning of the month. The 14 point drop took the Current Index to +49, the lowest point for our index since the +44 reported during the first week of January 2016. The 14 point drop is […]
License requests for steel coming from foreign sources are continuing at a pace where steel imports for the month of September will exceed 3 million tons. On Tuesday the U.S. Department of Commerce released the latest license data. The data is indicating a rising trend in total foreign steel imports (all products), hot rolled, cold […]
There have been two complaints filed with the U.S. Department of Commerce for circumvention of duties by Vietnam. One is on CORE (corrosion resistant steels like galvanized and Galvalume) and the second one is on cold rolled. Steel Market Update has seen the CORE complaint but we have not yet seen the cold rolled one. […]
After making a big move this past week, spot flat rolled steel prices out of the domestic steel mills remained range bound with only minor adjustments as steel buyers try to digest what they need to do next. Steel buyers have been telling Steel Market Update that there is a disparity between the mini mills […]
Earlier today Steel Market Update (SMU) participated in the monthly steel conference call hosted by HARDI. The call is for those wholesalers who supply galvanized sheet and coil to the HVAC mechanical contractors. During the course of the discussion it became clear that the wholesalers are quite concerned about the drop in galvanized spot prices […]
The week ending September 17, 2016 domestic raw steel production was 1,632,000 net tons while the capability utilization rate was 69.8 percent. Production was 1,687,000 net tons in the week ending September 17, 2015 while the capability utilization then was 70.5 percent. The current week production represents a 3.3 percent decrease from the same period […]
Steel service centers in the United States shipped a total of 3,378,700 tons of steel (all products) during the month of August, according to data just released by the Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI). The daily shipment rate improved by 1,000 tons per day during August compared to July as the distributors shipped 146,900 tons […]
Canadian steel service centers shipped a total of 364,800 tons of steel products during the month of August. Compared to the previous year shipments were 6.1 percent lower and the 364,800 ton level was the second lowest shipping month this calendar year (July was the lowest at 318,700 tons). Year to date the Canadian distributors […]
I got a note from Eddie Lehner, the CEO of Ryerson who attended our Steel Summit Conference for the first time this year. He dropped me a note today about our conference, “The SMU Conference is flat out worth attending. An unusual combination of candor, depth and subject matter relevance throughout the steel value chain […]
Late on Thursday evening we received the following letters to the editor, both from executives with flat rolled steel service centers: Great articles tonight, full of very useful info. There was a lot of space dedicated to HR imports, spreads to domestic, etc. With HR having been in excess for some time, it’s not surprising […]
The following analysis of the Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI) shipping and inventories data is what is normally shared with our Premium level members. Carbon steel shipments increased by 436,300 tons in August and almost reversed the decline of 443,300 in July. These gyrations are mostly driven by the number of shipping days in the […]
With the Wheatland Tube filing of a complaint against China using the ENFORCE Act we are about to enter the next stage of trade complaints. The Wheatland complaint is for circumvention of duties that already exist against Chinese products, so it will be interesting how quickly this first test case takes and will Customs and […]
Flat rolled steel prices continued to fall by double digits this past week on all of the steel indexes followed by Steel Market Update. As the pace of the slide has accelerated the spread between the indexes have increased. We have seen this same phenomena in the past which is caused by the differences in […]
Scrap prices surprised scrap dealers and have deteriorated more than what was expected going into September negotiations with the domestic steel mills. Here is how one of the national scrap companies portrayed the tone of the negotiations: “As you can imagine, it’s been a hectic time since the return from the holiday last week. As […]
Over the past few weeks the pace of the flat rolled spot price decline has quickened and many buyers believe benchmark hot rolled coil prices are poised to drop below $500 per ton for the first time since mid-April 2015. Or, are they? At this moment, SMU has our HRC index average at $525 per […]
When speaking to one of the main ferrous scrap analysts in the industry our newsletter was paid a compliment when I asked if the scrap community was aware of our newsletter. I was told, “They do already. Many of them have a lot of confidence in your reports. They refer to it more often then […]
Whoops, who left the door open? It seems like all the hot air has been sucked out of this steel market, at least for the time being. Flat rolled steel prices have been moving dramatically lower over the past few weeks. Steel buyers are telling SMU that the domestic steel mills are anxious to negotiate, […]
The uncertainty in the market (called the “blahs” by a number of our steel sources) is affecting both buyers and sellers of steel. Steel mills have been doing all that they can in an attempt to keep flat rolled steel prices from slipping too far. One of our mill sources had a sense of humor […]
Much has been made about the number of shutdowns there will be at various steel mills due to planned maintenance outages. Steel Market Update has been working with a number of our buyer sources to come up with a tentative schedule of the various projects due in the 4th Quarter 2016. This is our “best […]
We don’t think the domestic steel mills would have envisioned winning virtually all of their antidumping (AD) and countervailing duty (CVD) suits and still have foreign steel imports at, or above, 3 million net tons per month. Unfortunately for the domestic mills that is the reality that is sinking into the market (and probably a […]
I spent a great deal of time on two projects: flat rolled pricing and steel mill maintenance schedules. I want to thank those companies who worked with me over the past few working days to be able to provide what I think is better data (both in pricing and in the schedules) than what has […]
Twice per month, Steel Market Update (SMU) conducts a review of the flat rolled steel market in our quest to better understand market trends which affect steel pricing and purchasing. We invite approximately 550-600 steel people to participate in our questionnaires. Those invited come from the manufacturing segment of the industry (approximately 45 to 50 […]
Manufacturing companies and steel service centers concur about the status of spot steel pricing out of the service centers, spot flat rolled steel prices are dropping. Manufacturing companies reported rising spot prices during the entire second quarter and very early in the third quarter. We saw spot pricing out of the distributors begin to wane […]
Flat rolled steel prices continued their move lower with Platts taking their hot rolled and cold rolled averages down by $10 and $25 per ton, respectively. Steel Market Update (SMU) did not move our hot rolled and cold rolled prices on Tuesday of last week but we did make minor adjustments to galvanized and Galvalume […]