Outlaw Chinese Steel | Hacker News Reader

Outlaw Chinese Steel

huffingtonpost.com

26 pointsArtDev21 comments

The article is presenting allegations as facts. US Steel has asked the US International Trade Commission to investigate, but Baosteel strenuously denies all these allegations.

http://www.baosteel.com/group_en/contents/2863/81262.html

There is a strong element of hypocrisy. Last year, US Steel was one of several American steel companies who were ruled against in a $103m class action suit for price fixing.

http://business.cch.com/ald/StandardIronWorksArcelormittal10...

>The article is presenting allegations as facts

I only needed to read the domain name to know that would be the case.

Steel in china is produced by SOEs, by definition an SOE is not capitalistic it is communist. If a communist entity wants to export subsidized steel at or below cost why should the US stop them? buy all their steel and then laugh when you sell back luxury cars to them made from that cheap steel they gave you. Germany seems do be doing this well buying cheap cheap household goods and commodities and selling back high end goods the chinese can not reliably produce

Because you've then lost your local steel industry, put out of business by those dumping. Steel could be considered a strategic commodity, unless you want to be beholden to China for your future steel needs.

EDIT: You might be okay overpaying for steel for buildings, but would you be satisfied if China said you couldn't have steel for warships? Because they're entitled to not sell you a product if they don't want to.

When we needed titanium for the SR-71, we had to purchase it from Russia through shell corporations:

http://www.mining.com/bbc-future-sr-71-blackbird-the-cold-wa...

Well, here's one reason:

http://www.wired.com/2015/06/mystery-brand-new-bay-bridges-c...

Depends on the steel grade. I can't find any articles on this, but I only started looking.

Back when Japan and Russia were doing this in the 90s it was vanilla hot rolled coils, which is the bread and butter of the steel industry. Russian steel was almost German-steel quality and sold for less than US steel, while the Japanese steel was high quality and sold for slightly more than US steel but made up for it in its amazing quality. Both Russia and Japan were accused of dumping (which they were).

Also, the quality is important. Back when my family was in the steel industry Chinese steel was pretty bad and also very cheap: even with a drastically reduced price, it didn't sell. Their process must have vastly improved.

Notes: Japan eventually also started dropping its prices below US steel prices.

If you want to see if the Chinese product is as good as the US product look at the sizes of the coils: are they uniform? How is the plate cut? How is it packaged? Is the product able to stay wrapped in whatever banding they use? These are always pretty good indicators of the quality of the underlying product. Shitty product tends to fall apart a bit during shipping.

By Leo W. Gerard International President, United Steelworkers..

If you want to say "this would be a very good thing for US manufacturing employees", then yes, that would be true.

And frankly, his arguments are true to some extent. We all know this : outlawing Chinese steel imports would make a lot of buildings and bridges and even cars in the US safer. And somewhat more expensive.

By contrast, not doing this essentially dooms a few million relatively unskilled and highly paid Americans to unemployment, at least in the short term.

Caveat: highly paid is compared to the average, not what an SV'er would consider highly paid.

Instead of the US limiting Chinese steel imports, the US Government should buy it on mass, and simply store it.

If the Chinese government are in fact subsidizing it, that's just free money into the US Government's pocket, and once steel prices inevitably rises once more the USG could just sell that same steel back to China.

It is win/win/win. US steel wins because Chinese steel goes up in price due to demand, it is a win for the USG because they make money, and it is a win for the international community as it stabilises steel prices.

If the US government is going to expend the funds to buy mass quantities of steel and warehouse it, they might as well nationalize the US steel industry instead. A commodity is useless without the knowledge and surrounding industry supporting it (think about stockpiling crude oil, but not having any refineries).

Is there large environmental impact from mining steel ores, like there is from say fracking?

It's the smelting that causes most of the environmental impact.

American companies are all for free trade when it suits them.

For anyone who favors free trade as a standard reaction, but who gets an uneasy feeling, this interview had some pretty good arguments about why China is different. I can't say I've figured out what to think on the issue, but it's a good thought exercise if you have a commute to kill.

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/03/david_autor_on_1.ht...

The host is quite libertarian, but he's also a challenging interviewer who has a knack for asking the right questions.

Good old protectionism.

Huffington Post begins to sound like Trump supporters?

huffington post is probably as far left as you can get in an online publication

Some of Trump's ideas are pretty far left also.

For example, he proposed taxing vehicles imported from Mexico by semi-American companies like Ford. That's not exactly the free trade GOP party line.

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/elections/201...

Protectionism is neither "left" nor "right", its essentially an orthogonal axis. There are dissenters from the broad neoliberal trade consensus across the left/right spectrum. (Generally, the main dissent on the left favors international trade agreements, but favors stronger common labor, human rights, and environmental protections that are common in the current international regime, with tariffs as a fallback if they can't get these kinds of deals; the dissent on the right is more likely -- like Trump -- to see tariffs as a tool more directly to deal with trade imbalance, to see it about a weapon for "winning" trade.)

Not everything that disagrees with the dominant position of the Republican Party is "far left".

I believe now that labelling free trade as right-wing was a ruse all along used by the GOP to sell free trade to their voters. I see the rise of Trump as a sign that voters see through the ruse.

There has been bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for TPP and TTIP. Free trade hasn't been particularly left or right recently.

Free trade has a place but I don't believe anyone expected the Chinese government to subsidize industry to the scale they have. Now they have this massive industrial economy and such scale it frightens me personally. They can at any moment start churning out military hardware, bombs, planes, ships and they have people who work for very little money and are relatively happy doing so. We have given up our manufacturing, economy, and know how to the Chinese and some day I am sure we will regret it all for short term profits. Currently the Chinese are planning to build a military base on a disputed island 120 miles away from the Subic bay submarine base. Unless if we elect Trump we might as well roll over dead and just bring our military home and let China do anything to anyone while we stand by.

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