Guest Opinion in Response to Big River Steel / Nucor Article

Last week Steel Market Update published an article from one of our contributing writers, David Phelps who was the former president of the American Institute for International Steel (AIIS). The article was about Big River Steel and Nucor. You can link to the original article by clicking here. One of our readers had strong opinions about the article and has allowed Steel Market Update to reproduce their letter to the editor on the subject:

I’m writing to comment on David Phelps’ article from last week.  I see that the article was introduced as being “written by contributing writer David Phelps…”  and that the “article contains the viewpoint of Mr. Phelps…”  However, I feel that the brief article contains such strong opinions that it does a disservice to your publication and to the role of information and education provider that “SMU” generally provides so well.  The article should have been set aside as an editorial more clearly.  I have been a fan of David’s through the years as he took on some of the domestic steel interests and their sometimes overly aggressive attempts to restrict imports that threatened their market.  But I think that the verbal and written abuse David received from Dan DiMicco over the years may have affected David’s usually clear thinking and that the opportunity to get in multiple digs towards Nucor was too good for him to pass up.