Day: 13 March 2026

ArcelorMittal is understood to have resumed quoting this week despite ongoing market volatility and rapidly changing cost conditions, market sources tell Kallanish.

The current environment remains particularly challenging for producers, who are struggling to set prices as their costs continue to change amid geopolitical uncertainty.

European buyers and longs producers note that energy prices have nearly doubled over the past week, while scrap values in Western Europe are also increasing. Following the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, logistics costs are also under pressure.

Like several other European steelmakers, the market leader suspended sales last week while assessing the impact of the rising production costs. According to one source, customers are now waiting for new offers and, in order to avoid disrupting the supply chain, the company has decided to resume quoting. However, offers are reportedly valid only for a limited timeframe of one to two days, allowing the producer to regularly reassess the market situation.

Buyers confirm that the steelmaker is seeking price increases of around €70/tonne ($81.48/t) for its commodity grade longs products, including wire rod, rebar and sections, and about €120/t for high-carbon wire rod.

Other European mills are also implementing similar hikes. In Italy, rebar producers are seeking increases of €70/t after suspending sales last week, while other EU producers are lifting prices for sections and merchant bar by around €40-50/t.

One source believes the conflict is unlikely to end in the short term, suggesting production costs may continue to rise. Another European mill source expects demand to improve in the second quarter following a slow first quarter. Producers throughout Europe report a higher order intake for longs since last week as buyers secure material amid the uncertain outlook.

Meanwhile, a number of northwestern European mills appear to have returned with new price offers which are valid for one day only. ArcelorMittal and British Steel are said to have sent official announcements to their customers in the UK, with hikes of £50/t ($67/t) and £60/t, respectively.

The investigations, launched under the Section 301 trade regulations, will determine whether “those acts, policies and practices are unreasonable or discriminatory, and burden or restrict US commerce,” the USTR said.

The economies subject to these probes are China, the EU, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Japan and India.

The USTR said that the sectors affected would include aluminium, automobiles, batteries, machinery, non-ferrous metals, semiconductors and steel.

According to estimates by the Global Forum on Steel Excess Capacity (GFSEC), quoted by the USTR, the world’s total steel excess capacity was expected to increase to 721 million tonnes per year by 2027.

“The Trump administration’s reindustrialization efforts continue to face significant challenges due to foreign economies’ structural excess capacity and production in manufacturing sectors,” USTR ambassador Jamieson Greer said. “This overproduction displaces existing US domestic production, or prevents investment and expansion in US manufacturing production that otherwise would have been brought online.”

The investigations could result in the imposition of additional tariffs or other measures against imports from some or all of the trading partners affected, according to a report by international trade law firm Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg.

But the move was supported by steel market participants, citing long-standing issues of global overcapacity.

“Overcapacity is a serious problem. In some cases, such as Chinese autos and steel, it has wrecked economies and industries as well as cost jobs in America,” Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, said on March 12.

“For too long, global overcapacity has plagued a broad array of manufacturing sectors, including steel, aluminium and many others,” Roxanne Brown, international president of the United Steelworkers (USW) trade union, said on the same day. “We must push back against China and other ‘bad actors’ as they swamp world markets with their excess capacity and undermine our domestic industries.”

Public comments on the excess-capacity probe will be accepted until April 15, and a public hearing will be held around May 5 in Washington DC.

The initiation of the investigations came just over a week after US President Donald Trump unveiled his administration’s trade policy agenda.

According to a USTR report on March 2, Trump’s “America First Trade Policy” has decreased the country’s trade deficit in goods and has boosted domestic production.

Steel stockholders in Germany do not see business activity increasing above the average of recent months as a result of the escalating Middle East conflict.

In the long products segment, many mills left the market in the week after the US-Israeli attacks on Iran and suspended offers, suggesting that a price hike was imminent, partly in expectation of surging energy costs.

At the annual press conference of large distribution group Klöckner & Co this week, chief executive Guido Kerkhoff said upon inquiry that such incidents do affect market activity, but refrained from giving a clearer picture.

In an information bulletin to customers, another distributor writes that rising oil and gas prices will certainly affect steel prices. But the writer also cautions that the degree of increase “will not least depend on the buying behaviour of market participants”.

Several market participants tell Kallanish they have not seen much extraordinary buying activity since the Middle East situation escalated. “I would have expected [increased buying], and I’m a bit baffled it has not happened,” says a manager of a sections distributor. He recalls panic buying when Russia attacked Ukraine, “when customers came rushing asking for volumes they had booked for delivery two months later”. This is not happening now, he says.

Fears of shortages are so far confined only to fuel. “If you look at the petrol stations here in Stuttgart, the lines are long,” the manager says. In fact, car fuel is the most debated topic in Germany, as many players argue that prices in the country are higher than in most other EU countries.

A spokesman of a coil service centre notes that truck operators are especially suffering from a diesel price that has risen above that of regular petrol, which will likely filter through to freight costs. But in terms of demand and buying activity for steel, “I have not seen an increase resulting from the Iran war. Steel is slower than oil,” he notes.