If recycled steel prices rise in the United States, it could be more of a supply issue instead of a demand one. After Trump’s recent round of tariff introductions not many countries will be sending scrap metal to the US.
Multiple reports in early March 2025 indicated that the United States processing and trading sources were confident the March 2025 domestic mill buying season would result in more price gains for ferrous scrap.
In the previous two buying periods, waves of severe winter weather caused reduced generation and collection of recovered steel, allowing shippers to ask more per ton for scrap that, in the case of some mills, was needed to restock their inventories at the start of a new year.
If mills and foundries pay more for their scrap this spring, weather seems less likely to be the culprit. That begs the question if supply is remaining tight for economic reasons or if demand has strengthened compared with several months earlier.
The US economic outlook in early 2025 has been murky for several reasons, but some of the murkiness starts at the top – in the White House.
Picture: Recycling Today
After a recycling executive expressed his dismay about back-and-forth tariff policies to Recycling Today in February, a supplier to the metal recycling sector has expressed a similar sentiment in March.
“Everyone I talk to is just frustrated with the back-and-forth statements and shifting deadline dates,” he says. “How do you conduct transactions let alone make investments in that environment?”
Business planners seem to have expected a turbulent transition from the prior presidential administration to the current one, with several January 2025 economic indicator-related statistics pointing downward.
In mid-February 2025, the Rolling Meadows, Illinois-based Metals Service Centre Institute reports that shipments of aluminium products from US service centres decreased by 9.8 per cent this January compared with shipments in January 2024, while steel shipments declined by a less noteworthy 1.4 per cent.
Prospects in the metals-intensive automotive sector also seemed uncertain, at least by one statistical measure. Wards Intelligence reports light vehicle (autos, pickup trucks and SUVs) production in North America fell by 10 per cent year on year this January. Winter weather could have been a factor in auto sector demand and production, according to Wards.
On the export front, in the first week of March 2025, the Davis Index reported mills in Turkey had purchased 60 per cent less imported scrap from the US this January. That was helping lead to prices that were not moving upward in March.
Offering better news the same week, the Davis Index listed shredded scrap at an average of $431 per ton to domestic mills in the US in early March 2025, holding onto price gains that have accrued throughout the year.
Mill transaction figures gathered the Raw Material Data Aggregation Service of Pittsburgh-based MSA Inc. show No.2 shredded scrap having moved beyond the $400 per ton threshold this February 2025 for the first time in 10 months.
Sellers, buyers and processors of ferrous scrap likely are watching the news with particular attention this spring as they try to gauge the health of both the domestic steel industry and the overseas trading sector.
While domestic steelmakers want tariffs to supply them with a bigger piece of the pie, historically, the question can become whether the size of the overall pie begins to shrink.
Through the first two months of 2025, the Washington-based American Iron and Steel Institute reports year-to-date steel production at 14.18 million tons, down 1.3 per cent from the nearly 14.4 million tons made during the same period in 2024.
