Tuesday, December 29, 2015

US Tariffs on Chinese Steel Near 500%


Should help put the brakes on the global USD rally while pissing off the USD zombies over there.



13 comments:

Random said...

First world governments have long realized that "emerging" economies had a much lower cost based and most manufacturing industries would migrate to them. First low-value added manufactures would move to underdeveloped countries, but then also high-value added ones, because some "emerging" countries are not underdeveloped, they are highly advanced countries which happened to be poor.

Eventually of course prices would balance: labour income in the first-world would fall a lot, and it would rise a lot in "emerging" economies, but most ominously capital prices in first-world countries would also fall a lot, both because much lower labor incomes would not support high capital valuations, and because "emerging" countries would manufacture a lot of new capital.

The fall in capital prices and rents was considered catastrophic, so governments started to look for new "national champion" industries, most pointedly in services.

The fashion was to find them in "headquarters"-style services, those typically arising in a national capital city where many business headquarters would be found: such as legal, financial, marketing, research services.

The idea then became to "headquarterize" first-world economies: dirty, nasty factories, or even clean, hitech ones would surely flow to "emerging" countries, but the headquarters of those companies would be in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Toronto, Vancouver rather than in Seoul, Shanghai, Taipei, Mumbai, Singapore.

The future for the first-world workers would be get very highly paid elegant headquarters jobs at companies like Apple. Pfizer, Lehman.

A repeat of the "plantation" model of the 18th-19th century British Empire in which headquarters were in London and plantations in the colonies.

Therefore first-world governments have been heavily subsidizing "national champion" companies, especially in finance, but not only.


Of course they counted on the governments of Korea, China, India, etc. to be stupid; but those countries are no longer colonies and have sharp elites and businessmen who cannot see any reason why *their own* national champions should not have headquarters in their own capital cities, instead of letting foreigners in the USA and the UK skim the cream off the top.

So eventually Samsung and Huawei arose, and Singapore and Shanghai happened. So those "headquarters" industries started skimmed the cream off the top of the livelihood not of stupid ryots in the colonies, but off the rest of their countries, with layer upon layer of debt-fueled asset stripping...

Driven by "maker" heroes of astounding productivity like Fuld, Mozillo, Cayne, Lay, .... :-)

And applauded by the "first-world" middle classes, who hoped to be on the side of the winners, dreaming that in turning their own countries into plantation economies they would end up winners in the shiny mansions on the "sunny uplands" in the style they were sure they deserved, while losers in the swamps below would toil to provide them that style.

Peter Pan said...

No tariffs on Canadian steel, thanks to our free trade agreement (?)

Dan Lynch said...

Corrosion-resistant is a small part of the market.

Matt Franko said...

Reads like 236% minimum across the board Dan... then CRES got an additional 256%....

Unknown said...

Wait, are you trying to tell me that our red-blooded American profit raking corporate behemoth products cant compete with the evil, inefficient, commie produced products from China without a 500% interference tax on freedumb trade.

Matt Franko said...

Hey 2 rations of dog brain soup per day are a hard wage to compete with...

Tom Hickey said...

Wait, are you trying to tell me that our red-blooded American profit raking corporate behemoth products cant compete with the evil, inefficient, commie produced products from China without a 500% interference tax on freedumb trade.

Exactly. The problem only arises when TPTB are on the short end the stick that they created. Then they cry foul.

A short time ago, China warned to expect lower prices for exports as costs have fallen because technology. They also warned that they would go to court to defend their pricing because it is the market price in China. Other countries are getting out-competed and should STFU.

Ignacio said...

Greedy western elites and their minions getting outplayed everywhere...

Real wealth has been building up a lot over there while the decaying ex-middle class is dying (literally) to increasing health issues and decreasing wealth.

Karma must exists after all... The plantation model described by Random above has failed, time to recognize it, dump it and move on.

"Free markets" and "capitalism" have failed, get over the mantra and move on. Corporatism for the few and feudalism for the many is not working, time to take control over our live with proper governance again...

Unknown said...

Franko-

How sick is the mind of the mercantilist and liberal export loving left? That to make your people poor and to suffer all so the big rich interests can exploit your labor and sell cheap aka competitive goods abroad and keep all the profits for themselves.

So when the workers ask for more of the value they are ccreating so they can have 3 squares of dog brained soup (a 33% labor raise is a huge hit in business costs terms) instead of 2, the mercantilists and liberals can say....sorry we would love for you to not starve but if we feed you appropriately, its going to ruin our competitiveness.

What a twisted logic, the wealthier your population is, the less compwetitive you are and less competitive = bad to these people. So wealthier workers = Bad for these export zombies.

Matt Franko said...

Well they use the actual dog meat as an export product and only use the brains in soup domestically so that can really keep your domestic production costs way down that way....

The whole place looks like its ready to fall down any moment so they export their steel?

now they are importing AIR from Canada because they cant even breathe:

http://interestingengineering.com/china-is-importing-cans-of-fresh-air-from-canada/

They will do anything for a USD they're sick...

Matt Franko said...

"The problem only arises when TPTB are on the short end the stick that they created. Then they cry foul."

Tom you are making my case for me empirically ..... ie they're stupid...

Where is the big bad "neo-liberal conspiracy!" here?

Why would they conspire to screw themselves? Answer: they wouldnt... they're just stupid.

Matt Franko said...

Here from the article:

"Earlier this year, six US steelmakers filed a series of petitions with the Department of Commerce and the US Trade Commission claiming foreign producers were flooding the US market with cut-rate steel products."

The left calls this "K Street lobbying!" and "government capture!" and "citizens united!"... meanwhile the domestic firms are desperately trying to fend off an invasion of a billion USD zombies who wont stop no matter what....

Unknown said...

M-

Hilarious comments

"The left calls this "K Street lobbying!" and "government capture!" and "citizens united!"... meanwhile the domestic firms are desperately trying to fend off an invasion of a billion USD zombies who wont stop no matter what...."

Exactly. The top lefties from Bernie to Thom Hartmann (#1 progressive talk radio host w 2+M listeners a day), to Dean Baker all say that "outsourcing" aka net imports have destroyed the middle class and that we need to export more. Well, how do you export more without subsidizing the exporters or keeping wages low? Tariffs are nothing but reverse subsidies for domestic producers. They fail to appreciate that there is no good way to prevent a trade deficit if the ROTW wants to accumulate your currency and financial assets.

Hartmann had a retarded example where he said that foreign computer manufactures are 3x cheaper than domestic. $1000 for domestic and $333 for foreign so if you want make American companies competitive, just tax foreign computer producers 300%. Piece of cake right? Never considered that making computers more expensive for hundreds of millions of struggling American consumers in order to subsidize a few 10's of thousands of additional domestic computer manufacturing employees might be a net bad for the economy.

Seems he never thought any deeper about the subject then "if exports = good then more exports = better".