Posts tagged as:

forecast

2009 GDP forecasts and steel demand growth

February 2, 2009

The International Monetary Fund recently updated its global GDP growth forecast for 2009 and 2010.  Not surprisingly, the growth projections were revised downward.   So I thought I’d take the opportunity to update the graph showing the relationship between global GDP and steel demand and to refine the comments I made in a recent post using [...]

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“The sky is falling, should we run for it?”

January 23, 2009

On January 21, I appeared on a steel outlook panel at the inaugural AMM State of Steel conference in NY.  My presentation, “The sky is falling, should we run for it,” appears below.  The main point I made was that while 2009 will be a very difficult year, we should not be surprised that steel [...]

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Steel producer output reductions by date

October 23, 2008

Reuters India has very helpfully provided a chronology of recent steel industry production cuts going back to the middle of September. This is the link to the article. While the FT today reports the slowdown of Chinese steel production. The essence of the FT report is this… Shan Shanghua, secretary-general of the China Iron and Steel Association, [...]

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6 reasons why a downturn in steel won’t be as bad as in the past

October 15, 2008

The tumult in financial markets will spill over into the ‘real’ economy in a number of ways not least of course in slowing economic growth on regional and global levels. Slower economic growth means less steel consumption and production so it’s worthwhile, if a little sobering, to contemplate just how hard steel might be hit. There have [...]

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US Carbon Steel Forecast 2009 Presentation

September 16, 2008

NOTE: There’s an updated (for Q4 2008), revised (in Q1 2009) & expanded version of this presentation here: Here’s a shortened version of a presentation I made last week to the MSCI Economic Summit: Forecast 2009 meeting in Chicago. It’s a great event if you get the chance to go. The essence of what I [...]

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IMF World GDP Growth Forecast

July 17, 2008

The IMF just released its latest World Economic Outlook. The WEO includes world gdp growth forecasts for 2008 and 2009. Not surprisingly, world growth is expected to decelerate to 4.1% in 2008 and 3.9% in 2009, compared to 5.1% in 2006 and 5.0% in 2007. What does this mean for global steel demand growth? The [...]

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Is R for recession or resilience?

January 9, 2008

Goldman Sachs reported today that it believes the US economy will suffer a recession in 2008, and Goldman is not alone.  It seems everyone is worried about the impact of the credit crunch and high energy costs on US consumers.  So, what might a recession mean for shipments by steel producers in the US in 2008?  There is clearly [...]

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China demand expected to grow by 60 MT in 2008

December 14, 2007

The latest issue of the China Metallurgical Newsletter has Chinese steel industry data through October 2007. Based on the first ten months it looks like finished steel demand is likely to come in around 510 million tonnes for the 2007, while net exports are likley to finish 2007 at around 45 million tonnes (exports 62 [...]

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