After weeks of steady upticks, offers for Turkish wire rod in the US have leveled out this week, staying within the range of $23.00-$24.00 cwt. ($460-$480/nt or $507-$529/mt) DDP loaded truck in US Gulf ports. However, some sources are not considering this to be a “breather” in the general uptrend, wondering instead if wire rod offers from Turkey have reached their peak—for the near-term, at least—as lower expectations for the May scrap trend have spread beyond US domestic prices to export prices as well. If Turkey manages to negotiate US export scrap prices lower in the coming weeks, the incentive to keep raising long product prices will cease.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean wire rod offers from Turkey will see a sudden shift downward—if anything, sources expect prices to trend neutral at first and only go down once it is clear that lower scrap prices are here to stay. This might not be the case for all long product imports from Turkey, such as rebar, but considering wire rod’s tepid demand situation, there is no rush to “capture the trend” according to sources.