|
Post by alancalverd on Jul 14, 2018 22:15:22 GMT 1
A somewhat naive view of metal production.
Whilst it is true that the Chinese have been selling surplus bulk mild steel below its production cost in the USA, the problem for US industry is now the tariff on special steels that aren't manufactured there. Fortunately my clients have a large stock of Swedish magnetic steels and are recycling some of their old machines, but any newcomer into the high tech arena will find it expeinsive to get some of the specialist stuff from Europe, and it takes some years to bring a new product on stream at a consistent quality - which is why some companies specialise for a large share of a small market.
AFAIK it isn't economic to produce aluminum within the USA in the quantities consumed there. You need vast resources of hydroelectricity and a whole load of new capital plant to compete with Canada. It is of course possible to build new coal-fired smelters, but with the departure of Trump's puppet at the EPA that may run into some opposition.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jul 16, 2018 6:07:53 GMT 1
A somewhat naive view of metal production. Whilst it is true that the Chinese have been selling surplus bulk mild steel below its production cost in the USA, the problem for US industry is now the tariff on special steels that aren't manufactured there. It's you who's naive if you believe there's anything anyone else can do that American metallurgists can't. As you say, penny-ante stuff. The quantities consumed there is the largest in the world, per capita, and is about to go through the roof. Nonsense. The US is now self-sufficient in energy, for the first time since the war, and this year is due to become the world's largest exporter. There's no shortage of cheap energy in the States any more*. The capital plant - if it's going to generate an adequate income stream, it can get built, as any other plant gets built in a capitalist country. Trump is about to put through a multi-trillion infrastructure budget plan. Everything from airports to bridges to communications to pipelines is going to get renewed in the biggest domestic spending spree since Eisenhower. Then you have the Tesla revolution, coming soon to a dealer near you. Whoever runs a government agency is their President's "puppet" - that's how their system works. It's no different here. Otherwise, has the shale revolution somehow passed you by? Obama's wind and solar? Dream on. That scam is a busted flush, as far as the Americans are concerned, and it's never coming back. *And shale oil and gas is merely a passing interlude. Cold fusion, it turns out, wasn't a hoax or accident or mistake after all, and is now starting to come to the market; and, as I've pointed out before, free hydrogen from water-splitting is just around the corner.
|
|
|
Post by alancalverd on Jul 16, 2018 7:28:31 GMT 1
Metallurgists can do useful things quickly on a laboratory scale. Investors, on the other hand, take a sceptical view of the $100,000,000 needed to build a new furnace. This kind of kit has to last through several presidencies and still produce stuff at 25% less cost than any import.
Civilisation is specialisation. International business exploits and develops this concept: you buy stuff from the guys who can make it cheapest because they specialise and feed the whole market. Politics just adds cost and delay.
It's important not to confuse steel and aluminum production. Ali requires about 10 times the energy input per ton, which is why there are very few coalfired Al smelters.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jul 16, 2018 8:53:03 GMT 1
Metallurgists can do useful things quickly on a laboratory scale. Can it be that you believe there's some secret to making specialist types of steel? Some formula or technique the Americans haven't managed to decode? You must be joking! That's chicken-feed. Investors are desperate for places to stick their money - trillions of it! You think they're buying US treauries paying little more than zero percent interest out of altruism? They're self-sacrificing patriots, happy to see the money they're managing depreciate every day as long as they're helping Uncle Sam? The less cost than any import is sort of the idea. It'll make a profit, though, that's what hedge funds and investment banks and even your ordinary punter are interested in. It's how America got built. I don't think you appreciate why Trump is starting this trade war, and why China - and the EU, but we're just bit players - is going to inevitably lose it. Because, contrary to the standard neo-liberal ideology, America will win. American workers will be employed, American investors will earn profits, American trade deficit will be slashed if not reversed, American towns and cities will be rejuvenated. Coal and steel and cars are just the start. Listen to what Trump says - there's no reason at all to doubt he means it, and fuly intends to do what he'spromised to do, and what got him elected. It's a very novel phenomenon, I know, but it does seem to be a real one. I don't. It's also important to realise that the two usually go hand-in-hand. There are only three left in the US - all electric, I believe (why wouldn't they be?) - the two I've seen being used on telly were, anyway. I don't understand what you're trying to get at. You believe hydroelectric electricity is somehow hotter than other methods? How does that work then?
|
|
|
Post by alancalverd on Jul 16, 2018 13:06:34 GMT 1
Much, much cheaper than coal.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jul 18, 2018 16:22:49 GMT 1
Maybe so, if those are the two options. But they aren't. The only problem about energy America now has is how to artificially keep the price of oil and LPG high enough, given their ever-rising glut.
|
|
|
Post by alancalverd on Jul 19, 2018 0:35:05 GMT 1
Whatever fossil fuel you use to generate the electricity for extracting aluminum, hydroelectricity is cheaper, and electricity is the largest cost in the production process.
Life seems simple enough if you exclude politics. You can't grow oranges economically in Canada, but you can extract aluminum at low cost, so trade. It worked for the Franco-German coal and steel agreement until politicians started messing with the EU. Time was that meat and grain flowed into London and Birmingham, and manufactured goods flowed outwards. Complementary trading is good for both parties, rank protectionism is bad.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jul 20, 2018 16:11:47 GMT 1
Whatever fossil fuel you use to generate the electricity for extracting aluminum, hydroelectricity is cheaper, and electricity is the largest cost in the production process. Don't be ridiculous. Nuclear is cheaper, cold fusion is cheaper, hydrogen from solar split water is cheaper - even wind is cheaper. Or economics and even physics, it seems. As I said, you simply don't seem to appreciate what Trump is doing. What he's doing is mirroring the tariffs imposed by others on US producers. The Canadians impose over 100% on US agricultural products, for example. Fundamentally, on a broad front, this is the reason the US has been in trade deficit since LBJ - and this is the reason Trump got elected. What is "it"? Tariffs protecting your home industries? That's exactly what Trump is saying! He's saying, if you don;t play fair with us, we'll do the same to you. Actually, every President since Nixon has said exactly the same thing, when they're on the campaign trail. The only difference is that Trump is actually following through - and he hasn't even begun yet!
|
|
|
Post by fascinating on Jul 20, 2018 17:58:54 GMT 1
"Nuclear is cheaper, cold fusion is cheaper, hydrogen from solar split water is cheaper - even wind is cheaper." There isn't even one kw of electricity produced commercially by cold fusion.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jul 20, 2018 18:07:35 GMT 1
"Nuclear is cheaper, cold fusion is cheaper, hydrogen from solar split water is cheaper - even wind is cheaper." There isn't even one kw of electricity produced commercially by cold fusion. Yes, there is. You want a link? All you have to do is ask, politely. You, personally. You and Jean - just for you, I make these conditions. You should feel privileged. All your years' past efforts to be insulting have earned you such distinction.
|
|
|
Post by fascinating on Jul 20, 2018 19:29:40 GMT 1
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jul 20, 2018 19:31:08 GMT 1
What's pathetic is the inability of you women to be ordinarily civil.
|
|
|
Post by aquacultured on Jul 21, 2018 0:38:10 GMT 1
I can't see that they haven't been.
However, I can see you never are.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jul 21, 2018 0:53:46 GMT 1
I can't see that they haven't been. No, Uriah, that really doesn't surprise me. I can give you, ooh, let's start off with just an easy half dozen examples where I have been, perfectly so, to you, shall we? Only to be responded to, if at all, with oafish rudeness. You know I can, if you have any integrity left at all - do I have to prove it? Please answer, for once.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jul 21, 2018 1:18:46 GMT 1
Gone again, I take it? Just time to squeak your usual insult, then scurry away like a rat hiding behind a petticoat before you have to defend it - this is your version of civil discourse, sir, you mary!
I guess the Uriah reference must have passed you by, else you wouldn't have so creepily endorsed it. He was a character in Dickens, a middle-brow potboiler writer in the Victorian era, and as "polite" as you are. Try Jane Austen's Mr.Collins instead - you may have seen the BBC adaptation? Your blend of obsequiousness and greedy, flatulent, self-aggrandising delusion, to a tee. Or - this is a stretch, I know, but you can still do a bit of research probably - the character you most remind me of is Camus' Jean-Baptiste Clamence in The Fall. All the same empty life-denying civilisation-eroding beliefs, the self-delusion, the greed, the casual self-justified thievery and preening under the guise of "helping" people, who'd actually rather you simply stopped exploiting them, or at least were honest about it, and did something useful instead, the hypocrisies, futilities, the sheer boastful stupidity and supercilious belief that the people you exploit can't see through you, the farcical inabilities to see what's in front of your nose and arrogant self-congratulation that this blindness is a virtue!
But I'm probably paying you an undeserved compliment - at least Jean-Baptiste had the intelligence to reflect upon his miserable failures to achieve anything in life, and by its hopeless end learn what real values are, a little. In truth, you're probably just a Charles Pooter.
|
|