Steel Tariff Impact

According to Pat Kern, “The trend in domestic steel supplier price increase announcements every 30-45 days has leveled off. We experienced a cumulative price increase impact of 15-20% during the last 6 months in response to the federal governments steel tariffs on imported steel products, consequently the flow of foreign produced steel into the USA has slowed significantly, while domestic pricing escalated.

Several of the domestic steel manufacturing facilities that were previously idled, are now being re-started in an effort to replace the demand that was previously covered by the flow of foreign produced steel. In most of these restarts, it will require 6-12 months to fully refurbish and re-start full production capacity and implications of “spot” shortages in the availability of domestic steel supplies will drag-out for many months until domestic steel manufacturing capacity once again can balance with the overall market demand.

In regard to current market conditions for low rise non-residential metal building system construction, we have entered (2nd half of 2018) into a period of relatively stable pricing and a significant amount of pent-up demand is being addressed with current building system manufacturing activities at levels not experienced since the 2009 timeframe.

There is some start of “spot” market softness in the US markets depending upon the region of the domestic market, as well as virtually all international sales. As of this writing, overall PEMB construction demand has slowed in the domestic southwest region while the northwest and northeast regions continue to be the most active.

Patrick Kern

New Business Development &International Sales

BBS & International Ventures, LLC

(412) 496-5527