Spot market prices for US domestic cold rolled coil (CRC) are mostly stable since our last report a week ago, at $35-$37 cwt. ($772-$816/mt or $700-$740/nt), ex-mill, although deals toward the bottom end of the current range are reserved for volume buyers.
The current week’s situation largely mirrors what we published in our previous CRC report; buyers are reluctant to stock up until they’re sure that prices have bottomed, and many believe that domestic mills will try to announce price increases as a means of preventing the market from slipping further. Whether any such increase would spur order activity, push lead times out and successfully force prices upward, at least in the short-term, is a matter of speculation.
Import pricing is about on-par with domestic offerings, sources note, which makes buying import unattractive due to extended lead times. In terms of current import tonnages, data from the US Department of Commerce shows that preliminary census data from April 2019 has US CRC import tons from global sources totaled at 130,992 mt, whereas import data from April 2019 (census data) was recorded at 198,493 mt. US import CRC tons from Mexico during April 2019 were recorded at 26,216 mt, although it’s uncertain whether the newest round of Trump tariffs will impact south-of-the-border order placement.