September 3, 2025:  Nucor CSP Price Flat, Other Major Indexes Soften

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U.S. hot-rolled coil (HRC) prices continue to show signs of weakness, with key benchmarks slipping below recent highs despite attempts by mills to steady the market. Nucor has kept its official spot price at $875 per ton for a second consecutive week, following a modest $10-per-ton hike last week. Still, most major indexes are averaging between $800 and $830 per ton—a meaningful discount to Nucor’s quoted levels. WSD sources have indicated that significant large volume deals have been made available, with prices as low as $750-$770 per ton.

Futures trading also reflected bearish sentiment, with the CME U.S. Midwest Domestic HRC Index for September 2025 settling below $800 per ton for the first time in recent memory, closing at $795. The forward curve, however, indicates some modest recovery later in the year, with prices climbing to $817 per ton in October, $845/ton in November, and $858/ton in December.

WSD Take: By all indications, steel demand has not returned from its summer vacation. The story for most of the last few months has been tepid steel demand, and that has remained the case entering early September. In a pre-tariff world, WSD would expect that prices would be flirting with $650 per ton; however, with 50% tariffs on steel goods, prices are currently flirting with the $800 per ton resistance level. Amid talks of soft order books, chatter of scrap prices settling $10-$20 per ton below August levels are beginning to start.

Downstream markets remain tepid, as country level tariffs have continued to sow uncertainty into the marketplace. Furthermore, Federal Reserve policy remains abundantly unclear. It appears likely that the Fed will go forward with at least one interest rate cut between now and the end of the year; however, it is not clear how significant the cut will be. Economic uncertainty is extending well past the steel industry, with new job openings at their lowest levels since the beginning of 2020 and economic sentiment among consumers and businesses proving to be relatively soft.

Lead times remain stranded in the 3.5-4.5-week radius, with mill order books showing signs of weakness. At the start of this week, rumors started circulating regarding a significant slate of mill maintenance outage, with some market participants rumoring upwards of 700k tons of flat rolled outages from September to November. At the time of publication, WSD has not confirmed this exact figure; however, if this figure is true, it would represent a nearly 100k ton increase over last year’s seasonal outage levels.

Given the weak demand environment, it would not be surprising to see additional mill maintenance announcements pushed up in the coming weeks. Perhaps the only saving grace for steel pricing in the coming weeks and months will be if inventory liquidations put buyers in need of re-entering the market amid robust closures. In the absence of an improvement in real demand, this could push lead times up a few weeks (particularly for cold rolled and coated materials, which are rumored to have lower inventories than HRC). Ultimately, this could result in prices rebounding to $850 per ton by the end of October.

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