EuroWire September 2017

Transatlantic cable

† “The USA has everything to gain and little to lose from open global markets,” wrote Mr Fickling, in summation. “In trying to hurt China, Washington risks shooting itself in the foot.”

† China only just makes it into the top ten steel exporters to the USA by value. In every subcategory of traded steel, China is little more than a footnote in terms of USA imports. † Mr Fickling considers DOC Secretary Ross to be on rmer ground in his claim that China’s domestic steel glut is contributing to the recent weakness in prices – but only slightly. While China is certainly a big exporter of steel, by far the greatest amount goes to other Asian countries, most of them emerging economies that lack the capacity to meet domestic demand. † The top ten importers of Chinese steel are all in Asia. To the extent that prices of USA and Chinese steel tend to go hand in hand, it is because both industries use raw materials – iron ore, coking coal, scrap, natural gas – that are traded on a busy global market. “Isn’t there at least a case for whacking Chinese steel producers as a message to [President] Trump’s base that he’s standing up for their jobs?” Mr Fickling dismissed his own query as “lame.” † The USA manufacturing sector comprises steel users as well as steel producers, and ten times as many manufacturing jobs as steel production jobs depend on steel consumption. While primary steelmaking employs 385,000 Americans, transforming that metal into fabricated parts, machinery and vehicles accounts for some 4.1 million jobs. All things being equal, the Bloomberg contributor asserted, those industries stand to lose the most from the protectionist impulse that would preclude overseas competition.

Elsewhere in steel . . . † Most of the steel from the dismantled eastern half of the old San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge was sold, at $160 a ton, and shipped to scrapyards in Asia. But the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) held back a few choice pieces – about 450 tons’ worth of large beams and struts – to award free to sculptors who promised to turn them into local public art works. Steve Rubenstein reported in the San Francisco Chronicle that 16 th June was pickup day for sculptors with atbed trucks at the Caltrans yard at the eastern end of the bridge. Caltrans senior engineer Darryl Schram told the Chronicle it would be rewarding to see the old bridge reconstituted around the Bay Area in the form of artistic barriers, benches, sculptures and Stonehenges. The new span of the Bay Bridge replaced a seismically unsound portion with a self-anchored suspension bridge and a pair of viaducts. † In June, Governor Eric Greitens of Missouri signed into law a bill giving electricity discounts to industrial companies using large amounts of energy. The legislation also ensures discounted energy rates to future Missouri high-intensity industrial companies. The governor in May had called a special session of the state legislature to lower electric rates for a steel mill and aluminium plant planned for southeast Missouri.

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September 2017