Cleveland-Cliffs’ Lourenco Goncalves thinks trade measures announced by the US government on Tuesday against China were just the opening salvo in a series of trade actions. Case in point: The Biden administration targeted China’s “unfair” trade policies with additional tariffs on an array of Chinese-made goods - including steel, aluminum, and EVs.
Is it just me, or does it seem like the summer doldrums might have arrived a little early? I could be wrong there. It’s possible we could see a jump in prices should buyers need to step back into the market to restock. I’ll be curious to see what service center inventories are when we update those figures on May 15. In the meantime, just about everyone we survey thinks HR prices have peaked or soon will. (See slide 17 in the April 26 survey.) Lead times have flattened out. And some of you tell me that you’re starting to see signs of them pulling back. (We’ll know more when we update our lead time data on Thursday.)
Hold-rolled (HR) prices held roughly steady this week after slipping for much of April. I don’t have any spicy quotes to offer about mostly flat prices. Besides, a lot of the questions I’ve gotten recently have been about demand. Some of you tell me that it’s still stable or improving. Others tell me that it’s suddenly dried up.
If successful in its overtures to Anglo American, BHP will create the world’s largest diversified miner by a country mile. The rationale for this merger is scale and in mining, size matters.
Destocking at service centers and a downturn in steel pricing impacted Ternium’s shipments in Mexico in the first quarter of the year.
Steel Dynamics Inc. (SDI) executives said the company's Sinton, Texas, sheet mill should be able to increase melt capacity after an outage earlier this month. Sinton should see "additional improvements in production" after taking "several maintenance days in April," Barry Schneider, SDI president and COO, said in a Q1 earnings conference call on Wednesday.
Cleveland-Cliffs is working on a solution for its recently idled mill in Weirton, W.Va., that will address pent-up demand for transformers, increase the need for its electrical steel, and get its workforce back to work.
Nucor executives explained their recently introduced hot-rolled (HR) coil consumer spot price (CSP) is a way to serve their customers and deal with market volatility.
Galvanized buyers reported steady demand and ample supply this week as pricing momentum has shifted, potentially pointing down. Service centers, distributors, and manufacturers who are members of the Heating, Air-Conditioning & Refrigeration Distributors International (HARDI) association met virtually on Tuesday, April 23, for the monthly meeting of HARDI’s Sheet Metal/Air Handling Council. Sentiment was noticeably […]
AZZ Inc. said it is seeing improving demand for its coil coating services as it reported a solid quarterly performance.
I was in Las Vegas last week for ISRI’s annual convention. I like Vegas. I’ve had some fun there over the years. (I was married there nearly 20 years ago. We're still together.) And last week was no exception. So let’s start with the big news from Sin City. When the recycled materials industry meets for the big event next year, it will be under the banner of "ReMA" – not "ISRI".
As the ISRI 2024 conference unfolds in Las Vegas, attendees are diving into crucial discussions shaping the future of the recycling industry. Here are the main topics being discussed: New steelmaking capacity coming online this year Export demand during this period Infrastructure spending Supply of pig iron and HBI Current logistics challenges May scrap prices […]
Last week was a newsy one for the US sheet market. Nucor’s announcement that it would publish a weekly HR spot price was the talk of the town – whether that was in chatter among colleagues, at the Boy Scouts of America Metals Industry dinner, or in SMU’s latest market survey. Some think that it could Nucor's spot HR price could bring stability to notoriously volatile US sheet prices, according to SMU's latest steel market survey. Others think it’s too early to gauge its impact. And still others said they were leery of any attempt by producers to control prices.
For something that wasn’t on the agenda in Washington this week, the proposed Nippon Steel deal for U.S. Steel is getting a lot of attention.
President Biden said on Wednesday he would stand by his commitment to US workers regarding the proposed sale of U.S. Steel to Japan’s Nippon Steel.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will be in Washington this week where one topic under discussion with President Biden will be U.S. Steel's proposed sale to Nippon Steel.
Galvanized buyers reported solid demand and balanced inventories this week and were anticipating the sheet price increase announced by Cleveland-Cliffs on Wednesday.
Worthington Steel is taking a pause on M&A activity as it focuses on progressing its electrical steel expansions in Mexico and Canada.
Join SMU’s next Community Chat webinar with Barry Zekelman, executive chairman and CEO of Zekelman Industries – the largest independent steel pipe and tube manufacturer in North America. The webinar will be on Wednesday, March 20, at 11 a.m. ET. It’s free for all to attend. A recording will be available to SMU members. You can register here.
What does it mean to be a domestic steelmaker in the 21st century? Of course, that idea is open to interpretation. The vibrancy of the US industry is a testament to that. Between integrateds, EAFs, how to approach decarbonization, downstream ventures, American innovation goes in many directions.
Reaction to the price announcements last week by domestic mills varied just a little depending on who you were speaking to. I heard rumblings before the announcements that a price hike of $100 per short ton (st) was coming. After the announcements were made, I had some questions as to whether they were increases at all.
Consumer confidence in the US declined in February after accelerating to a two-year high the month prior, The Conference Board reported. Results came in amid ongoing concerns regarding the US economy. The headline Consumer Confidence Index declined to 106.7 in February from a downwardly revised 110.9 in January. The index, which measures Americans’ assessment of […]
I want to give a big shoutout to the good folks at the Fabricators and Manufacturers Association (FMA) for inviting me to their annual conference this week in Clearwater, Fla. I also want to give a special thanks to the FMA for awarding SMU founder John Packard with a lifetime achievement award – on that also gave me a chance to catch up with my old boss in person.
Mexico has said it will place retaliatory steel tariffs on the United States if the US acts to reimpose Section 232 on its neighbor, according to an article in Reuters.
This week, the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial conference convenes in Abu Dhabi, UAE. There are many issues on the WTO’s plate. The question is whether any resolution of these matters is likely or even possible. One of the most important issues is the future of the dispute settlement system, which has been rendered impotent […]
Olympic Steel said it's open to future acquisitions in all three of its business segments.
Falling steel prices at present are not a symptom of demand but of imports arriving into the US and to some parts of Mexico, Ternium’s CEO Maximo Vedoya said this week.
Sheet prices have fallen again this week on shorter lead times, higher imports, and potentially higher inventories. (We’ll see for sure when we release our service center shipment and inventory data next week.) I remember reporting almost exactly the same thing about a month ago and getting a fair amount of pushback. Not so much these days.
Prices for galvanized products have been falling for more than a month, and market participants expect this trend to continue in the near term.
What’s something going on in the market that no one is talking about? That’s a question on our survey, and was also posed to many who graced the stage at our Tampa Steel Conference. Perhaps another way to phrase that is “not talking about publicly” or connecting the dots of steel market chatter to find a uniting central issue. I thought one respondent to our survey really summed up the current moment: “Right now it is all politics.”