Inside rumor mill has 20% of U.S. Steel Gary Works management being shown the door tomorrow. Contract negotiations not going well for USX or Mittal. Heath-care benefits the big sticking point. Contract will sunset end of the month. 150 days to negotiate without a contract and still work. After that the company can go to court and have an impasse declared. Big, big changes coming in the steel industry.
If further consolidation is considered to be a turn around, then yes. The U.S. steel industry isn't going away, but it will get smaller. The interim will be painful.
X has been taken apart as I expected, but now might be a time to stick a toe back in. Gary Works has fired up four furnaces in the last two weeks. Fairly large orders are coming in from a new customer who is rejecting foreign steel due to quality issues. Mittal in related news is picking up orders at Burns Harbor and East Chicago. Contract issues are still unresolved but people I talk to are saying a strike and/or lock out is unlikely. All renegotiation of pricing and services with vendors has been completed. A tepid buy is on my radar.
Steel Quotas The European Union will tomorrow impose limits on steel imports to handle the fallout of the U.S.'s steel tariffs. This isn't about the tariffs on EU steel, but a result of the fact that Trump's tariffs mean there's more steel out there that's not being imported into the U.S.—EU producers would rather not have all that steel dumped into their domestic market. The quotas will last until mid-2021. Reuters
U.S. opens probe into steel imports from China, Canada, Mexico: source The U.S. Commerce Department is set to announce it will open a new anti-dumping probe into whether fabricated structural steel from Canada, China and Mexico is being sold at below fair value, a person briefed on the matter said. The investigation comes as some U.S. lawmakers, car companies and Canada and Mexico have strongly urged the Trump administration to drop tariffs on steel and aluminum. (Reuters)