Last week, Donald Trump indicated he would make an announcement this week with regard to his decision on the Section 232 recommendations, adding that the decision would involve a 25 percent blanket tariff against all steel imports.
Energy pipe sources have since told SteelOrbis that until the final decision is made, they “can’t quote anything, because we don’t know what the effective date will be or if there will be any attempts to make it retroactive,” a source said. “We can’t do anything until the dust settles. Before last week’s press conference, when Trump laid all this on us, we were already having mills come to us saying they can’t and won’t ship anything to the US until they could figure out what was going on.”
All previous offers have been pulled, another source said, adding that prior offer pricing is no longer valid.
Prior to traders pulling their offers, the most commonly heard transaction range for US import J55 ERW OCTG casing from Taiwan in the US domestic market was at $40.00-$41.00 cwt. ($882-$904/mt or $800-$820/nt), DDP loaded truck in US Gulf coast ports.