US slaps China steel imports with fivefold tax increase

[Checkerboard Strangler]

That's what the Brits said about the US in the 18th century. Which is how America gutted England's textile industry.

History repeats itself, but in reverse. The Chinese will continue to dominate, due to low prices, in many low engineering-content manufactured products. However, they will not be opening up offices in Manhattan to compete with American finance. Neither will they be competing much with American agriculture.

Or in most hi-tech sectors where manpower is a minimal input to production. Meaning "services" of any kind.

Which is why I keep insisting upon the same idea - we must move our children "up-market" by means of Tertiary Education, so they can find higher-skills-content and thus better paying jobs. We should do the same for anybody else who wants to return to school to improve their skills/competencies.

Which is no BigNewIdea, because that's what happening here in Europe.

We should be enhancing their abilities at no cost to them - because if not, as taxpayers, we shall be simply paying their UI or family-subventions for living below the Poverty Threshold.

There is no escaping that challenge at hand ...

Well you just made a very convincing argument for access to college for all.
If not FREE, then super cheap.
Personally I happen to think the FREE idea would fail and I am okay with that, because if it's FREE to all, then it becomes WORTHLESS to all and it needs to be perceived as something of great value which can be taken away by those who refuse to value it.
Super cheap, super affordable tuition tied to PERFORMANCE seems a very reasonable compromise.
If the kids do the work, they get super cheap tuition and as long as they continue to do the work, tuition is pretty much spare change.
If the parents or the kids are wealthy (say perhaps, above 400 thousand a year?) then they pay full price.
I think that is a reasonable compromise and it turns university education into a badly needed solid investment in our future.

 

[Lafayette]

EDUCATION IS KEY TO OUR FUTURE AS A NATION

Super cheap, super affordable tuition tied to PERFORMANCE seems a very reasonable compromise.

Some facts about educational "performance" in America (from the Dept. of Education, here, for 2014):
*Rate of High School Completion (2014) - 88.3%
*Rate of Bachelor (or higher degree) - 32%
*Percentage by degree level:
--Associate - 26.7%
--Bachelor - 48.8%
--Master - 20%
--Doctor - 5.6%
*Result: Almost half of our kids have a postsecondary level degree.

The challenge is evident. If we are doing pretty well at graduating our kids out of High School, then we fail at getting most of them out of a postsecondary education. Now, you tell me why.

Because (I happen to think) we have allowed state postsecondary education (once the least expensive) to get out of reach of far too many families.

Meaning what? We must invest in our future by financing postsecondary education to all comers. Just as much as we finance the most effective DoD in the world.

Performance is simply a matter of a passing grade and getting the diploma. It's an entry-ticket to higher-paying jobs that require the skills/competencies only a postsecondary education can offer. (And I wont go into the way our secondary-schooling level leaves much to be desired given the mediocre results from the Program of International Student Assessment, here.)

If we, as a nation, want to compete globally, we must do so intellectually as well.

MY POINT?

Many perhaps think that tertiary-education is a "gift" - like food-stamps. It isn't. It's the key to our future as a nation! We invest in technologies, we must learn to invest in education.

Because, the world is no longer like the early 1950s, from which emerged an America strong, vibrant, working and the world's primary defense against communist hegemony. All that is history - interesting but mostly irrelevant to our future.

The future of America is clearly investing in our youth, which is a cost well worth undertaking. The returns to our kids will be better lives had from a better future* ...

*That is, if we can ever ween them away from the latest fad, spoiled as they are by the BoobTube/Internet - both of which have become, in almost all countries, debilitating mind-poison for fragile mentalities.
___________________

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

The historic reason for investing and creating jobs in the US has been our economic and political stability. Our military has (understandably, in the age of nuclear weapons,) worked to create global stability and security and has thereby eliminated our historic advantage in this area.
This amounts to a huge subsidy of foreign manufacturing and domestic wealth/resource extraction.
Why would those who benefit from such extraction want to empower a new generation by helping them get educated?
To paraphrase Trump:

"They love the poorly educated!"

Our citizens are already paying for peace and stability here at home. Since WWII, we have been paying for it abroad as well, but without the attendant tax revenue. In fact many "American interests" abroad pay little or no taxes and are American in name only.
Moving from domestic to foreign manufacturing hurts the Democratic Party because domestic products are or at least used to be made by Union labor, which heavily supports that party. A large part of the final consumer cost of foreign goods is transportation. Shifting production overseas benefits oil companies whose fuel transports the goods here. I think we all know which political party the oil industry supports.

The reason we have bought peace and stability "without the attendant tax revenue" is because we are under the delusion there is such a thing as an "off budget" war. Reality however demands all bills must be paid and we financed our wars by borrowing from China, a communist country. Oh, the irony.

We traded our prosperity for the bush Iraq invasion. All we got was increased global terrorism, a destabilized middle east and half a million or so dead innocent Iraqi. -- and all it cost was 6 trillion ON CREDIT> they call themselves FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE CONSERVATIVES.

To paraphrase George Carlin:

They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting f***ed by a system that threw them overboard 30 f***ing years ago. You know what they want? Obedient workers; people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly sh**tier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.

 

[Reformedfindlay]

Screw global markets... America first..

Global markets got America to this point.

We somehow have grown weak. Afraid to compete. It perplexes me.

 

[Ikari]

Global markets got America to this point.

We somehow have grown weak. Afraid to compete. It perplexes me.

We have labor and environmental laws .

 

[Reformedfindlay]

We have labor and environmental laws .

Even without them you think we'd ever be able to regress back into an industrial nation to compete with China in what it's best at?

 

[Orly?]

Global markets got America to this point.

We somehow have grown weak. Afraid to compete. It perplexes me.

America got global markets to this point..

 

[Reformedfindlay]

America got global markets to this point..

You need to open a history book... I'm so done here.

I too as a nationalist love dick swinging but that sentence was horrifically wrong on so many levels.

 

[calm]

IMO we should be producing and/or recycling steel HERE in the USA rather than shipping "waste" steel to China for recycling and buying steel from them.

Our economy needs to become more diverse, with a stronger heavy industry rather than being so dependent on overseas producers.

The largest U.S. export to China is scrap metal and scrap paper.

And .... Currency Manipulation.

Calm

 

[Chagos]

The largest U.S. export to China is scrap metal and scrap paper.

And .... Currency Manipulation.

Calm

:applaud :roll:
1. Aircraft, spacecraft: $15.4 billion
2. Electronic equipment: $12.8 billion
3. Machinery: $12.3 billion
4. Oil seed: $11.1 billion
5. Vehicles: $10.9 billion
6. Medical, technical equipment: $7.9 billion
7. Plastics: $4.9 billion
8. Woodpulp: $3.4 billion
9. Organic chemicals: $2.5 billion
10. Cereals: $2.4 billi

Is it such that as long as you get to say something, it doesn't really matter what it is?

 

[calm]

:applaud :roll:
1. Aircraft, spacecraft: $15.4 billion
2. Electronic equipment: $12.8 billion
3. Machinery: $12.3 billion
4. Oil seed: $11.1 billion
5. Vehicles: $10.9 billion
6. Medical, technical equipment: $7.9 billion
7. Plastics: $4.9 billion
8. Woodpulp: $3.4 billion
9. Organic chemicals: $2.5 billion
10. Cereals: $2.4 billi

Is it such that as long as you get to say something, it doesn't really matter what it is?

I had remembered this factoid from past years and posted it from memory ......

However; since you seem to patrol these forums and constantly commit drive-by ridicule .... I searched my database for the original.

America’s Biggest Trade Export to China? Trash
In China’s economic surge, America’s garbage could be a valued chip.
By Jodie Allen
March 03, 2010
America’s Biggest Trade Export to China? Trash | US News Opinion

"And while electronic components as well as oilseeds and grain continue to rank among the top three categories of exported goods, the fastest growing and now No. 1 export category is--"Scrap and Trash."
According to data provided by the U.S. International Trade Commission, Chinese imports of U.S. cast-offs (scrap metal, waste paper, and the like) surged by an eye-popping 916 percent over the 2000-2008 period, with most of that expansion occurring after 2004."
America’s Biggest Trade Export to China? Trash | US News Opinion

Calm

 

[jet57]

'The US has raised its import duties on Chinese steelmakers by more than fivefold after accusing them of selling their products below market prices.
The taxes of 522% specifically apply to Chinese-made cold-rolled flat steel, which is used in car manufacturing, shipping containers and construction.
The US Commerce Department ruling comes amid heightened trade tensions between the two sides over several products, including chicken parts.
Steel is an especially sensitive issue.
US and European steel producers claim China is distorting the global market and undercutting them by dumping its excess supply abroad.
The Commerce Department also levied anti-dumping duties of 71% on Japanese-made cold-rolled steel.

The ruling itself is only directed at what is a small amount of steel from China and Japan and won't have much of an impact - but it is the politics of the ruling that's worth noting.'

US slaps China steel imports with fivefold tax increase - BBC News



Thoughts?

Would have been nice if Ronald Reagan would've done the same thing when Japanese steel was tearing the American steel industry a new one.

 

[chuckiechan]

Yes, I was questioning the tariffs since China is doing the West a favor by subsidizing steel.

If you are comfortable having no domestic steel industry, then yes it's cheaper to buy under market steel. But as you lose your industries you lose your technology and the people who operate the plants. AKA "institutional amnesia". Worse, you lose your freedom to negotiate, which is where we are heading with our industrial base.

If it was Canada, that is one thing, but it's a hostile power gutting our base to curtail our ability to produce.

It's time to renegotiate our bad deals and make fair deals or no deals at all.

 

[calm]

American Capitalists took all their profits over to China and built the largest and most advanced and sophisticated factories known to mankind.

China can satisfy the North American demand with just what falls off the assembly lines.

And again .... it was not Free Trade that the did ultimate harm to the North American workforce ..... it was that their were no certain rules within Trade Agreements concerning currency manipulation.

Folks in North America could agree to work for a buck an hour and China (and every other country) would just devalue their currency.

How can North America compete with that scenario?

I contend that these Trade Agreements were deliberately done so that the Capitalists could walk away from every promise made to every workforce since the end of WWII.

They knew full well (beginning in 1990) that 10 thousand people per day would be lining up to collect the 20 thousand dollar per year social security check which were promised to them, if only they would trust the Capitalists and not be too greedy and join a union and which may have had these promises etched in stone like the Financial Terrorists do with loans.

If the corporations had not promised pensions, many workers would of demanded higher pay so that they could salt money away for their future themselves.

And worse .... the U.S. Capitalists abandoned the North American Continent while leaving the Government funded Pension Guarantee board with the corporate liabilities which has near bankrupted the system.

Calm

 

[Chagos]

.....................However; since you seem to patrol these forums and constantly commit drive-by ridicule ...............

with the propensity of some to post ridiculous nonsense, there's really no need to ridicule those that are already ridiculing themselves by that former action.

With the propensity for some to garner their impeccable wisdom from blogs and call those "reputable sources", it becomes even clearer how unnecessary it is.

Your claim was incidentally ridiculous already 6 years ago (date of these blogged opinion pieces), so that doesn't say much for the quality of whatever database you claim to rule over.

 

[fmw]

'The US has raised its import duties on Chinese steelmakers by more than fivefold after accusing them of selling their products below market prices.
The taxes of 522% specifically apply to Chinese-made cold-rolled flat steel, which is used in car manufacturing, shipping containers and construction.
The US Commerce Department ruling comes amid heightened trade tensions between the two sides over several products, including chicken parts.
Steel is an especially sensitive issue.
US and European steel producers claim China is distorting the global market and undercutting them by dumping its excess supply abroad.
The Commerce Department also levied anti-dumping duties of 71% on Japanese-made cold-rolled steel.

The ruling itself is only directed at what is a small amount of steel from China and Japan and won't have much of an impact - but it is the politics of the ruling that's worth noting.'

US slaps China steel imports with fivefold tax increase - BBC News



Thoughts?

It is a good start.

 

[Citizen.Seven]

China isn't the only steel producer, so losing "your freedom to negotiate" isn't really a factor: if China starts trying to play hardball over steel, just buy from someone else. I just don't see the advantage of paying more for steel to prop up an uncompetitive US industry.

 

[chuckiechan]

To win a contract you usually have to be low bidder. There is always someone who will buy "outlaw steel" and undercut your bid.

The Chinese stole the technology, and are now using their excess capacity to drive the worlds steel producers out of business.

 

[austrianecon]

My thoughts are...'uh ohhhhh'.

If this is more then just election year posturing, this could eventually get very ugly for everyone who is not rich.

Hopefully it is just posturing though.

US will get it's pee pee smacked as China and US are WTO members as it did in 2014.

 

[Cyrylek]

'The US has raised its import duties on Chinese steelmakers by more than fivefold after accusing them of selling their products below market prices.

Thoughts?

So, the American steel industry gets a temporary boost that will help it to drag its feet and resist innovation for a little longer. While every other American economic actor gets punished with higher prices on steel. The benefit for a few is focused and highly visible. The (much more significant) harm to very many is distributed and hidden. That's exactly how crony capitalism works, and why it is so difficult to eradicate.