Final Thoughts

It was one of those days. Publishing a newsletter is like giving birth three times a week anyway, but the labor pains for the SMU staff were particularly acute today. John Packard was ostensibly taking the day off, but that did not stop him from writing a big story and sending untold emails.

Keeping abreast of the latest market developments stemming from the havoc wreaked by the coronavirus has made our normal news coverage even more challenging. The changes we report on are much bigger and far more frequent. Much of the news comes from the mills’ attempts to right-size their companies and match production with today’s woeful demand. The mills are scrambling to stop the bleeding, almost reinventing their companies on the fly as they make painfully difficult decisions about which assets to use and which to put on the back burner. Which employees to support and which to lay off or furlough. It’s to their credit that they have managed to react so swiftly and effectively. We spent hours today trying to verify rumors that Cleveland-Cliffs is planning to idle the hot strip mill at AK Steel Dearborn. (The company has not confirmed, but it looks like that is the case.)