Prices for most flat-rolled steel imports into the United States have continued to slide while prices for certain domestic flat-rolled products have reached new lows.
In a market where prices for domestic products have trended lower than those for their imported counterparts, at least in near term, importers may find little appetite to be aggressive in the US market."[There's] not much to talk about, since the imports are not being offered and the domestic prices are too low for the foreign producers to be interested in offering steel to the USA," one East Coast distributor source said.Still, buyers continued to hear offers, and some sources voiced expectations that the domestic market would hit bottom soon. When that happens, imported materials may once again become competitive.Most market participants have remained in a wait-and-see mode since the news broke that the US would remove Section 232 tariffs on steel imports from Canada and Mexico, in addition to halving the tariffs applied to Turkish products. It may still take some time for those countries to bring more attractive offers...