The US economy heading to elections is humming along with no major crises foreseen. That means steel consumption will be decent with most sectors but especially with construction.
So why does the market feel so poor for so many long products players now? One, there hasn't been any price increases for a long time and the purchasing done in the last six months, turned out to be bad ones with the prices steadily declining.
The supply is plentiful from the domestic producers even though the imports are back in the line and barely considered for many. Worse, dometic mills are competing fiercely for the same declining demand.
For rebars, imports from Egypt and Algeria are on the edge of working with slightly lower prices than domestics, but the big buyers are very nervous that more decreases may come in August and September. The default action nowadays is to hold rather than writing purchase orders. Only wildcard is the Ukrainian melted, EU produced rebar such as Bulgaria that can lower the prices enough to make it appealing to skeptical buyers. But the volumes will not be massive.
For rods, the import possibilities are even less. Domestic rod pricing is lower than rebars and imports of low carbon industrial quality rods will not compete with the domestic rod prices. Again, Ukrainian/Polish/Greek wire rod is the only one in the stats that looks like arriving in some modest volume.
Another noteworthy news is that President Biden modified Section 232 for Mexico and asked Mexican steel to be melted and poured in Mexico in order to maintain its exempt status. For rebar and wire rods, this is not going to be a big change as Mexican mills mostly roll their own billets. However, this could be a significant change for some flat rolled imports coming from Mexico | 
