Price Check on Steel Aisle USA: Rebar About $40/ton Above HRC
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The first two weeks of November appear to show that USA flat- and long-product markets are poised to end the year on an upswing. Spot prices early this week have inched higher for both hot-rolled coil (HRC) and rebar, after mills announced price increases. Ferrous scrap, meanwhile, settled sideways across most grades and regions for November, after price declines the previous two months.
“The US holiday season will kick off in about two weeks with Thanksgiving and mills are looking to firm up markets before then,” a Midwest service center buyer told WSD. “There is momentum for flat-rolled, with HRC spot rising to about $860-$870 per ton,” he added. “Mill lead times are into 2026 at most mills, so anyone needing spot material before then will have to pay up—if they can find it.”
Nucor announced a modest increase on Monday of $5 to $895/ton for its Consumer Spot Price (CSP) for HRC made at most mills. Its price for HRC from CSI remained at $950/ton, reflecting a $55 premium on the West Coast.
Quotes were higher in early trading Tuesday, November 11, for all HRC monthly futures contracts on the CME through March.
Meanwhile, “Rebar spot prices are right around $900-$910/ton FOB domestic mill and not facing much import competition at all,” a steel trader said. “It used to be odd when rebar prices exceeded hot band, but that’s been the case much of this year now.”
In fact, Nucor announced late last week a $30 increase in its rebar pricing. CMC and Gerdau did the same. Rebar mills independently announced price hikes of around $60/ton in June and July. “All confirmed orders as of the close of business on November 7th, 2025, will be price-protected if shipped by November 21st, 2025,” Nucor said in its letter to rebar customers.
“Ongoing infrastructure spending is supporting construction-related demand and that’s keeping long product prices lofty,” explained a steel distributor. “It’s not just rebar that’s higher than HRC; beam, wire rod, merchant bar, sections are all around $1,100/ton or more.”
WSD Take: Can US HRC prices be ready for lift-off?
US hot-rolled coil (HRC) spot assessments are currently in the $840–$875 per ton range, depending on the price reporting agency. That’s one of the larger spreads we’ve seen in the past three to four months – and it reflects a market driven as much by psychology as by fundamentals.
Right now, sentiment is clearly on the side of higher prices. Service centers and end users are generally running lean inventories, and the supply side has tightened in a meaningful way. Two factors are doing most of the work:
- Imports have fallen off sharply. The intensification and enforcement of Section 232-related measures are now hitting the market in earnest, cutting into the pool of available foreign tons. Buyers who had been relying on imports as a safety valve are suddenly finding fewer options, and that scarcity narrative is feeding bullish expectations.
- Domestic mills are tighter on availability. Mill order books are firmer, in part because of a heavier-than-usual maintenance season among US sheet producers. Planned outages have removed capacity at a time when inventories are already low. This tightness is likely to extend into the first quarter, with a major planned maintenance outage at US Steel’s largest blast furnace at Gary Works already announced for early next year.
On the surface, that combination – low inventories, falling imports, and constrained domestic supply – looks like the perfect recipe for a sustained price rally. And it certainly explains why spot prices have lifted into the mid-800s.
But there’s a problem: demand remains weak. The question, then, is not whether supply is tight – it is – but whether demand is strong enough to sustain a major leg higher in prices.
To get a sense of what stronger demand plus tight supply can do, it’s useful to look at rebar.
In the rebar market, demand is generally healthier than in the sheet market right now, supported by ongoing construction activity and infrastructure-related projects. On top of that, supply is far more consolidated: Nucor and CMC together account for roughly 80% of the US rebar market. In that environment, we can clearly see how tighter supply discipline, combined with solid demand, gives producers real pricing power.
By contrast, the sheet market today has tight supply but uninspiring demand. Mills can push prices higher in the short term, especially when buyers are under-inventoried and feeling the pinch of reduced imports. But without a real demand engine behind it, this kind of rally risks becoming a short-lived, sentiment-driven spike rather than the start of a durable up-cycle.
Prices can continue to grind higher in the near term as outages bite and imports stay constrained. But we do not see demand as strong enough to generate the kind of momentum needed to send HRC decisively and sustainably above $900 per ton by the end of this year. If demand starts to re-awaken, however, all bets are off—prices can quickly rise by an additional $100/ton.
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