US domestic hot rolled coil prices have been on a slow, downward drift since peaking at $34 cwt. ($750/mt or $680/nt), ex-mill in late March, but some feel that current prices, which have declined to $31-$33 cwt. ($683-$728/mt or $620-$660/nt), ex-mill, may soon reverse course. This week’s price reflects a $1.00 cwt. ($22/mt or $20/nt) decrease on the low end of the range reported last week.
Sources close to SteelOrbis have predicted that US HRC prices could eventually settle at $30-$32 ($661-$705/mt or $600-$640/nt), ex-mill, but after US President Donald Trump last week issued a memorandum indicating that US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross had initiated a Section 232 investigation into steel imports, it’s believed that a growing number of buyers will start to buy domestic.
“In the first couple months of this year alone, steel imports rose 19.6 percent year-over-year, and are now more than 26 percent of the entire US marketplace,” Secretary Ross said. “The question we will be trying to address in the report is to what extent that impinges on our economic and national defense security.”
And while the stature requires the investigation be completed within 270 days, Ross feels it will be completed much sooner. “Given the number of trade cases and, therefore, the consequent amount of research that we’ve done, we think it will be accomplished a lot sooner than that,” he said.
If a tariff is implemented, he added, it won’t be to prohibit foreign imports, but “it will just be to change the price,” which could, in turn, make offshore bookings non-competitive compared to the US market.