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Strange Steel Industry Stats


megabear

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Below are three seperate excerpts from an FT article. I find it all rather confusing. Steel Imports are up 8% to the 4th largest year ever even though the price has been jacked from 250tn to 400tn? Why the huge import increase and wouldn't this add to inflation numbers?

 

US braced to feel the heat over steel output

By Edward Alden in Washington

Published: December 16 2002 1:18 | Last Updated: December 16 2002 1:18

 

EXCERPTS:

 

Ten months after President George W. Bush imposed hefty tariffs of up to 30 per cent on foreign steel, a curious thing is happening to US steel imports: they are increasing. US purchases of foreign steel this year are on track to be the fourth highest ever, running almost 8 per cent above last year's levels, based on figures up to the end of October.

 

Developing country steel producers, in particular, have seen a windfall increase in exports to the US because they were initially excluded from the tariffs, as have Canada and Mexico, which were exempted under the North American Free Trade Agreement. While US imports of finished steel are down sharply from traditional suppliers such as Europe and Japan, they are up 17 per cent from Canada, 41 per cent from Mexico, 40 per cent from Brazil and 118 per cent from India.

 

When steel prices surged after tariffs were imposed in March, the Bush administration granted a further controversial series of exemptions to try to mitigate the impact on US steel buyers. Since hitting a peak of $400 a tonne in July, spot steel prices have fallen to less than $370, still well above pre-tariff levels of less than $250 a tonne.

 

 

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?p...&p=101257172708

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HRFF is from steel country and his mother's family was in it in a big way FUR a long time. Perhaps the Administration knew this would happen and structured the tariffs deliberately so that FUR now, everyone gets to have their cake and eat it, too. Those who needed higher prices have 'em, those who wanted to continue to import are doing so.

 

Can it lASSt?

 

Time will tell.

 

American steel was in trouble long ago. Failure to modernize. Greedy unions. Greedier management. Failure to cooperate. Aging infrastructure.

 

A good rolicking WAR consuming men and materiel like a bonfire would put it back on its feet, GUESSES HRFF. Or, pardon the expression, "galvanize" the country into realizing that heavy industry in general, and domestic steel production, in particular, are in its vital long-term interests.

 

As a child, now and then, HRFF would be taken to Pittsburgh and every now and then at night, to drive the boulevards along the Monongehela and Allegheny rivers where the giant steel mills lit up the night sky with lights and huge belching clouds of steam and smoke that went on endlessly, it seemed, mile after mile after mile, their massive dark silhouettes looming between the highway and the water's edge. It was a sight to behold, the industrial might of American steel in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Now, those mills are either gone or silent, rusting hulks, mostly.

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US Steel's capitalization is about the same today as it was in 1900. What todays dollar is worth now in 1900's I dont know. 5 cents? At least they are still around.

 

If you want to study deflation steel is a good a story as any you could find. Everyone is to blame, nobody is to blame. It's the arc of all markets it seems to me.

 

You can get a Sony VCR for $89 now. If anyone reading this found themselves assembling those VCRs in China for a month they would be suicidal. I'm not sure what my point is but it's bound to be a good one.

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