US Midwest HRC continues to hover around $46 per cwt
Published by:Rachel McGuire<>
6 May 2025 @ 21:02 UTC

Hot-rolled coil prices remained mostly steady on Tuesday May 6 as buyers’ wait and see approach to purchasing continued to linger. Fastmarkets’ daily steel hot-rolled coil index, fob mill US Midwest was calculated at $46.31 per hundredweight ($926.20 per short ton) on Tuesday, up by 0.52% from $46.07 per cwt on Monday and down by 1.19% from $46.87 per cwt a week earlier on April 29.
Inputs were collected around $44-47 per cwt, representing deals heard and general assessments of the spot market.
An input in the buyer sub-index was discarded as it was deemed unrepresentative of current market levels.
Inputs were rolled over in the seller sub-index due to a lack of liquidity.
Heard in the market Buyers continue to hold off on spot market purchases after a spur of buying activity ahead of the start-up of the Section 232 tariffs on steel in March. Demand is weak from the automotive, agricultural and construction industries, one distributor said, leading to the decline in HRC prices over the previous weeks.
Market participants anticipate that prices for HRC will fall over the next three months due to typical summer seasonal trends and a lack of demand. Mills are performing well in May, sources said. But because inventories have been pulled ahead from the panic buying, June could be a difficult month for producers. Lead times are compressing as a result, one buyer said.
Lead times were reported to be between three and five weeks.
Quote of the day Regardless of tariffs, they are still not stopping Chinese metal from coming into the US as finished components and parts, a distributor said.