Steep price increases give steel users fits Many lay the blame on China

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04046/273262.stm

Jeffrey Nayhouse needs nerves of steel to open his mail box. Each day brings the owner of Allegheny Fence letters such as the one on Feb. 10 from Master Halco, which sells steel fencing to his Hazelwood company: Throw our price list out the window.

"Due to the existing environment, we cannot print pages as quickly as the increases are taking effect. ... We have no idea when pricing and availability will stabilize," the company warned.

The story's the same at Bob Roberts' mail box. "I get a letter almost every day from a steel company or two steel companies or three steel companies we deal with and every letter is the same," says Roberts, vice president of Frank Roberts & Sons, a Punxsutawney building materials distributor.

"If it's steel, it's up and it's up significantly and it sounds like it's going be to up for the entire building season."

Rarely has the cycle in the cyclical steel industry swung with such abandon. Just a few years ago, prices were at 20-year lows, a phenomenon steelmakers blamed on 200 million tons of excess steelmaking capacity worldwide.

[aquart]

1. Aww. We shipped our industry overseas and now...

We're at their mercy.

And no one even tells you about the tool and die industry. Oh no.

How to make a nation a sitting duck.

The first time they tried to close a steel factory, we should have nationalized the damned thing.

[madrchsod]

2. i don`t feel sorry for anyone

who buys steel from overseas. they fucked my trade over for 30yrs and now they cry about the price. the place i worked at couldn`t keep going because the price per ton was just aliitle bit higher than overseas. so they closed it down and two rolling mills closed forever. they kept the melt furnaces going-it`s owned by a us company-they bought it so they could have there own supply of steel. no overseas steel for that usa company...

[camero]

6. The military for one

Your tax dollars at work.

[0007]

3. This is not a good sign of things to come.

[jamesinca]

4. I read in the Suskind book about the steel issue

O'Neil said that Chenney wanted the tariffs for a political favor repayment. The U.S. and Japan were sitting on 75% of the surplus of steel in the world, so us and Japan were the only ones capable of flooding the market. It also said that there was a 6% growth or some figure close to that in steel profits etc... here in the US. The Bush administration with a lot of influence from Chenney put the tariffs on to make other steel more expensive and easy for US Steel to move. This is somehow related to that, somehow this administration has screwed America again with a political favor.

[jmowreader]

5. I'm eating the increases right now--how long is the question

I sell 48-inch chainlink fence fabric in 50-foot rolls for $36.00. The last time I got a shipment, I paid $32 a roll for it. And right now, it's hard to get. I have 18 rolls in the store; it takes 16 to fence one acre. I would really prefer to have 45 rolls, but when I called the vendor and asked for 36 rolls (I had nine already) I got laughed at. In three months, when fencing season really gets going good, it will probably be impossible to get. The $36 price is predicated on my paying no more than $24 for it--and my wire comes from Master Halco, same as Jeffrey Nayhouse.

My pricing comes from Atlanta, and I fear that in the 2004 season, steel will be like oriented strand board was last year--that stuff just went out of sight. Fortunately for me, I have other materials to build fences from; if you wanted to roof your house last year, you had the choice of plywood decking and OSB decking and both were outrageous.

Cars are going to get expensive. Steel-stud construction will probably cease this year, which will affect the lumber market. If you use steel in your business, expect lots of complaints about shit you can't control. (If I had a nickel for every time someone asked for the $5 OSB I had "earlier this year," I would have a lot of nickels.)

[Loonman]

7. Stupid Bush's fault

Put tarriffs on steel, people went and bought it elswhere.

[burrowowl]

8. Get this

stucco has gone up 30 or so % and they are blaming it on China too!?

[Claire Beth]

10. I can believe that!....

my friend owns a hardware store and he says he is having a very difficult time getting NAILS!!! The suppliers cannot get them to him and this is a DIRECT result of outsourcing. The cost is going up on nails about 30 percent, too.

[Claire Beth]

9. we will soon be hostages to foreign countries....

this outsourcing of jobs is NOT a good thing.

[doc03]

11. Please read the whole story on the link!

The steel price increase has absolutely nothing to do with the tariffs, as a matter of fact if it wasn't for the tariffs steel would even be higher now. The US uses more steel than we can produce in
this country. The problem is caused by the falling value of the dollar and the price of scrap. The reason the price of scrap is up is because the steel production has been outsourced to China. The Chinese have no old automobiles or rusting factories to melt down so they buying up the worlds scrap and driving prices up. If the tariffs weren't put on there would have been two steel companies in my area alone that would have shut down taking about 6 million more tons out of the US capacity. I have got to give the devil his due, you won't find one of this areas 7000 steelworkers that think the tariffs on steel were wrong.

[Kinkistyle]

12. What the hell are they building over there?

"I can't imagine one country in the world could screw up the economy this much. What the hell are they building over there?" says Don Lawrence, purchasing agent for George L. Wilson & Co., a North Side building materials distributor."

Probably lots of the stuff the U.S. used to build. Or maybe buildings to house the one billion people they got over there.

[doc03]

15. Ever been to Walmart?

[tedoll78]

13. Purely political question:

does this mean that PA, MI, and WV will be easier to win in November?

[doc03]

14. Don't count on it

Those tariffs on steel gave us 20 months of breathing room. The tariffs along with the Byrd bill loan saved 3000 jobs where I
work. And it has kept Weirton Steel from going out of business all together they are now being purchased by ISG. The damage done to the steel industy was done by the Clinton administration. I don't agree with Bush on much of anything but here I have to agree with him. If Clinton didn't betray the steel industry Gore would have carried WV
and we would have President Gore now.