Wire rod prices in the United States have deteriorated for a third consecutive month due to a range of factors, with prices for imported material also down on fresh cfr offers originating from Europe, Africa and Asia, market sources said.
Fastmarkets AMM's assessment for industrial quality low-carbon wire rod was at $37-38 per hundredweight ($740-760 per short ton) fob mill on Tuesday April 16, down by 3.8% from $38-40 per cwt last month. Fastmarkets' assessment for imported wire rod was at $680-700 per ton cfr Port of Houston, down by 8.4% from $744-762 per ton in the same comparison.Negative sentiment permeates domestic marketWhile market sources uniformly indicated that the US wire rod market has continued to perform poorly, they nonetheless differed on which factors were primarily responsible for driving the downtrend in the market. "The real story that should be told is that the US domestics, with their aggressive [anti-dumping and countervailing duty] policy and the Section 232 tariff on wire rod have effectively choked their wire drawing customer base," one trader said."You can blame winter, snow, wet spring, whatever - [the] real issue is finished wire products manufactured offshore are...