Following the Chinese stimulus, Asians quickly lifted the wire rod and rebar prices by $30-$40 per ton and as of this week, we haven't seen any softening on their asking prices. They also claim they had some success at the elevated prices and fixed some actual orders despite the cooling off the Asian steel futures.
The rest of Europe, Middle East and Africa followed these increases and those mills are now offering at similarly elevated levels compared to a few weeks ago. This bumped up the offers by traders in the US, making imports even more unaffordable for many rebar and wire rod customers. Import price increases are harder to achieve because of the 25% tariff as if the mills raise their prices by $10 /ton, actual costs of bringing the tons to the US goes up by at least $12.50 /ton, and possibly more due to higher financing costs of the cargo.
So with future offers not attractive in general, spot market activity picked up and rebar that is on the ground went up by about $1 cwt due to more demand and diminishing inventories.
We have not heard any domestic price increase for rods or rebars yet as mills have capacity and scrap prices settled generally sideways.
On the rod side, the big wildcard is Liberty Steel in Peoria, IL. They made an announcement for reduced production for both wire rod and wire and let 60% of the workforce go home temporarily. They are in the middle of union contract negotiations as well. So far, Liberty was able to fulfill their orders with reduced operation but the future of this supply source is still questionable.
On the rebar side, there is no such question of supply disruptions and the domestic mills compete fiercely with each other for market share and this is keeping the prices low and flat for now. | 
