Steel prices, and the rest of the commodities will rise next year for the following reasons.   The United States has started printing money to help battle the economic crisis, and this is not a political statement just an economic fact.  When this has been done in the past it has caused a rise in the inflation rates.  The second effect of this economic crisis is that the dollar continues to decline against other currencies and this will also cause the prices for all the hard assets to increases.

With the weaker dollar it will be harder for many of the service centers, and mills to bring in imported steel.

Steel Prices are heading up, and I believe that they will move pretty fast over the next couple of months, and will be back above last years pricing.  There are several reasons for this.  The first one is that the Steel Service Centers are carrying inventory at historic lows.  So any increase in demand over the next couple of months will drive prices up.  The Second reason, is that the Mills have been forced to idle a lot of capacity, so they will be slow to react to the demand which will cause pricing to rise as well.

In the next couple of days I will also give reason why this will be a long term trend.