Foreign Orders Expected to Continue at High Levels

There will be a lot of news in the media today and tomorrow regarding foreign steel imports and their damage to the U.S. economy. We are seeing demonstrations across the country by union workers trying to influence policy and, particularly, the final determination of the OCTG dumping suits. Politicians are involved with Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) on Tuesday touting the newest report calling for protectionism for the domestic steel industry and its workers. We are covering the issues from a number of perspectives and we will let our readers determine where the happy medium needs to be.

SMU watches steel imports and import data very closely and we also have a number of questions in our flat rolled market analysis on the subject. We conducted a survey this past week and we continue to see very high response rates for those companies who are admitting that they are buying foreign steel.