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Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert

wsj.com

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Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert

#91

Post by sverige »

rtkwe wrote: post #71
Kenji wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, in war times, we can plant potatoes in all our gardens and take our spare meadows. We don't need these farmers in peace time; we really don't. They are leeches.

Tiny little farms like that wouldn't be a huge amount of food. It's vastly inefficient compared to a huge factory farm and you can just summon up the tractors and watering infrastructure to properly run a farm.

Tell that to those who lived under the Soviet collective laws. They were allowed something like 1/2 acre to grow food for their families. Those little patches produced a significant amount of the food that wasn't grown on the collective farms.

Of course, a lot of that had to do with incentives....

Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert

#92

Post by 627467 »

ramchip wrote: post #27
627467 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A genuine question: why is this dumping, but importing any other electronics (say any modern computer, cellphone, appliances) not so?

As the article mentions: > the companies were selling products below the cost of manufacture and that the Chinese companies were benefiting from unfair subsidies from their government. I assume Foxconn does not get subsidies to sell iPhones below cost :)

I just don't understand how easy it is to determine the cost of manufacture something outside of one's economy and infrastruture.

I'm in Argentina at the moment and I'm constantly hearing local businesses accusing china of dumping because they can't produce more cheaply, but than everywhere else in the world we buy Huawei, Xiaomi, etc I feel that accusations of dumping are more political interpretations than measurable facts.

Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert

#93

Post by sverige »

brohoolio wrote: post #9
loeg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why is that a problem, exactly? In the end aluminum is fungible for aluminum, and the US is getting aluminum from Mexico under NAFTA. Trying to enforce a tariff on element production from a subset of external countries seems sisyphean.

If China is greatly subsidizing the aluminum production then then how will US producers compete? It's in the US's interests that they don't allow another country to manipulate the market to destroy the US production capacity. Once that capacity is online the foreign country can then raise prices. It's not easy or cheap to bring production capacity online.

Exactly why the Saudis are doing their best to kill the US fracking industry.

Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert

#94

Post by seanmcdirmid »

627467 wrote: post #90
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selling at below cost is dumping. Selling at above cost is not.

I understand. But how do we know the real cost when the country we are talking about is China? Even in transparent economies like the EU, you find convoluted ways to subsidize companies (or convoluted ways to accuse companies of receiving subsidies - depending where you stand in these issues)

Because they aren't being convoluted about it, their costs and subsidies are very obvious. They are simply losing money and keeping the mills going via state guaranteed debt (well, the banks are being ordered to lend).

Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert

#95

Post by whybroke »

malchow wrote: post #40
ryanmarsh wrote: post #25

One of the reader comments said: "Extradite him to the US and then prosecute him. Getting rich without any merits is horrible." and I thought: you must be new here

Really? Wouldn't you think U.S. has the lowest proportion of "rich without merits" as %age of rich of any nation in the world – and indeed in history of world?

Given that the US has among the lowest social mobility of developed nations, this is highly unlikely today.

Interestingly, Americans have more belief that their society is a meritocracy than most developed nations and so are especially unaware of the problem. I submit it is this commonly held perception rather than data that is informing you comment.

Obviously in the past, when democracies were even fewer in number, the situation may have been different.

Here[1] you'll find a bounty of links supporting my point were one to take time time to read it rather than instantly and silently down voting what one doesnt want to know.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility#Patterns_of_mo...

Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert

#96

Post by colechristensen »

nyolfen wrote: post #82
cperciva wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is the point. No, NAFTA does not cover importing dairy products into Canada; similarly the USA kept tariffs on some dairy products as well as sugar and peanuts. Unfortunately pretty much all "free trade" deals turn out to be "free trade except for a small number of politically well-connected industries". :-(

Kvetching by free trade acolytes about 'real' free market capitalism reminds me strongly of leftists bickering about the USSR not actually being communist.

'real' free market capitalism can't exist because without proper regulation, power/wealth tends to concentrate to a level where the strong ruin the 'free' bit.

'real' communism can't exist (outside small rare communities) because the industrial revolution failed to bring about a post-scarcity economy which was marx's failure of prediction.

A post-scarcity economy which eliminates the importance of capital is probably very possible in the future. Complete hands off capitalism probably is never going to be possible.

Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert

#97

Post by colechristensen »

Kenji wrote: post #55
cperciva wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A similar, and perhaps more amusing, situation happened in Canada a few years ago. We have a 245.5% import tariff on cheese (why? Because dairy farmers are more important than poor people, apparently) but there was a much lower tax on "food preparations", including packaged pizza toppings. So companies would package up "pizza topping kits" in the USA, import them to Canada as "food preparations"... and then remove th…

I loathe farmer subsidies. I have no idea why our government gives farmers so much money and so many advantages - nobody in our society really benefits from those incredible spendings and it's a significant fraction of our state budget.

If you don't subsidize farming in rich countries, all your food will come from poor countries. Poor countries without standards for food safety, scruples about burning down rainforest for a few years of fertility, or worker rights or fair wages. You starve poor countries by selling off all of their food to rich countries and making what's left very expensive. What farming is left in rich countries can only possibly be made economical doing so at the largest most industrial scales. When shit hits the fan external sources get much leverage on rich countries because they don't own their own food supply and don't have the economy in place to make their own when the suppliers get disagreeable.

And folks at the grocery store aren't going to like the prices if they want their unsubsidized groceries to be grown by their own countrymen earning middle-class wages.

Subsidies right now are certainly not where they need to be. The whole thing needs to be reformed but there are basically two classes of people: rich powerful special interests that profit from the status quo, and ignorant citizens that don't understand the very basics of why anything is being done.

Ignorance and greed underly most of our problems. Which one are you guilty of?

Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert

#98

Post by colechristensen »

sverige wrote: post #91
rtkwe wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tiny little farms like that wouldn't be a huge amount of food. It's vastly inefficient compared to a huge factory farm and you can just summon up the tractors and watering infrastructure to properly run a farm.

Tell that to those who lived under the Soviet collective laws. They were allowed something like 1/2 acre to grow food for their families. Those little patches produced a significant amount of the food that wasn't grown on the collective farms. Of course, a lot of that had to do with incentives....

Oh you can totally feed your family with a half acre. If you're good at it you can feed several families.

If you only grow and eat potatoes, you can feed 7 people 2000 Calorie/day diets all year. That's the figure if you grow potatoes like big potato farmers. If you nurture the land and integrate other species taking advantage of differing growing seasons and do all you can to make perfect soil conditions, you can get a lot more out of it than potatoes every day for 7.

Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert

#99

Post by kyllo »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #84
Kenji wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loathe farmer subsidies. I have no idea why our government gives farmers so much money and so many advantages - nobody in our society really benefits from those incredible spendings and it's a significant fraction of our state budget.

It's a way of bandlimiting (lowpass filtering?) price change through mild overproduction. It works because overproducing food costs less than the risk of market shortage transients. It's one of those Catch-22 moments where you feel in awe of the genius of it. I am very sorry it is a significant fraction of your state budget. Given the nature of the risk profile your state should not be underwriting this risk.

In manufacturing terms it is a way of encouraging the use of inventory to buffer against demand volatility and reduce the probability of shortage events.

Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert

#100

Post by [deleted] »

dmitrygr wrote: post #64
enoch_r wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate, can someone provide a single historical example of a case where dumping "worked," in the sense that one country's manufacturers were able to rake in large profits after their foreign competitors went out of business due to subsidies? Because unless dumping actually succeeds at that goal, and I don't see any evidence that it does, it seems indistinguishable to American consumers from a huge t…

Rare earth metals dumping caused all US mines to close for decades.

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