Tags
aluminum, cricketdiane, moscow mitch, recession, soybeans, trade war, trump trade war, US Economy
China applied a 25% tariff on soybeans in July of last year in response to U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods.
China is honoring agreements signed earlier to import U.S. soybeans, according to Cong Liang, secretary general of China’s NDRC, CCTV reported.
China bought 32.9 million tonnes of U.S. soybeans in 2017, before the trade war.
Overall, China has purchased about 14.3 million tonnes of last season’s soybean crop, the least in 11 years, [etc.]
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forced Trump’s administration to compensate farmers for two years with combined spending of as much as $28 billion.
China imported $9.1 billion of U.S. farm produce in 2018 – mainly soybeans Sc1, dairy, sorghum and pork LHc1 – down from $19.5 billion in 2017, according to the American Farm Bureau.
from:
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Our country is giving? $28 billion in farm subsidies beyond agriculture subsidies already in place or making loans available of $28 billion that must be paid back by farmers who could easily be made bankrupt by this trade war? PLUS our country has a loss of over $19.5 billion in sales which were partly suffered in 2019 because of the trump trade war and partly because China now says there will be no more purchases of US agricultural products at all.
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China made up $5.9 billion in U.S. farm product exports in 2018, according to the U.S. Census. It’s the world’s top buyer of soybeans and purchased roughly 60 percent of U.S. soybean exports last year.
China is the fourth largest market for U.S. farm exports, behind Canada, Mexico and Japan.
[etc.]
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/06/china-agriculture-us-economy.html
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One of the cable news reports mentioned that now China has changed its purchasing of soybeans to getting them from Russia and Argentina. I should go look for that and how likely they will continue in the future to do that instead of buying from America.
While farming exports are a relatively small portion of the United States’ annual $20 trillion in GDP, Judge said it will directly hit farmers and exacerbate other problems they were already facing.
U.S. net farm income has been falling in the past six years, well before the effect of tariffs. Income has dropped 45 percent since a high of $123.4 billion in 2013 to about $63 billion last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/06/china-agriculture-us-economy.html
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Then I think about how products made in China for the American marketplace which will now have agricultural products from other nations in their manufacture end up costing more to us again.
Now we have nearly bankrupted farms and their surrounding support businesses being bankrupted, extreme losses of products, profits and US commodities in the marketplace which would’ve otherwise strengthened America and the ripple effects of a poorly executed, poorly planned and poorly timed trump trade war.
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Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, renewed calls for a national security review of the deal on Wednesday, expressing concern that that the mill will supply the Defense Department.
It is sad to consider history will tag Republican Senator McConnell as Moscow Mitch, but certainly understandable. The change in EPA regulations which have nearly gutted them in the US based on Republican and Trump maneuvers along with Moscow Mitch McConnell pushing through removal of sanctions from a Russian oligarch’s company he may have known was putting $200 million into a new Kentucky aluminum rolling plant in return for 40% ownership of a $1.7 billion dollar plant and business enterprise.
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According to a press release, RUSAL will earn a 40 percent share in the factory’s profits, and Braidy will keep the remaining 60 percent.
The plant has also received $15 million in direct investment from the state of Kentucky. Gov. Matt Bevin cut a deal to attract Braidy to the state with that public money and additional tax incentives totaling more than $10 million.
The Ashland aluminum mill would be the first such plant to be built in the U.S. in 37 years, according to industry sources
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That sounds like taxpayers in Kentucky gave over $25 million to this Braidy company and its Russian partner, plus the fact that Moscow Mitch had two staffers which previously worked for him doing the lobbying for the Russian company to be released from sanctions – as described here –
Former McConnell chief of staff Hunter Bates and former top McConnell adviser Brendan Dunn, who now work at lobbying giant Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, pressed Congress and the Treasury Department to allow the Russian company Rusal to invest $200 million to develop an aluminum mill in McConnell’s home state, Politico reported.
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Kentucky lawmakers approved an unusual, $15 million investment in the Braidy project that was worked out by Bevin’s administration, making taxpayers partial owners of the mill.
Bevin, a Republican ally of President Donald Trump, said Monday that the Rusal investment will have a “powerful impact on the economic revitalization and industry diversification in eastern Kentucky.” Thousands of coal jobs have disappeared from eastern Kentucky in the past decade, and the spinoff effect has hurt many other businesses in the region.
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THE MAIN THING – Rusal is sending Russian aluminum to be used in this Braidy aluminum rolling plant. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN? Didn’t Trump and the Republicans say they were supporting US aluminum producers and their potential to supply domestic and international markets so the products and profits would serve the US economy? What happened to that?
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Are tariffs boosting the U.S. aluminum industry? | PBS NewsHour
Rusal would supply aluminum for the new mill from a smelter under construction in Siberia.
Rusal said it would assume a 40 percent ownership stake in the mill in return for the investment, the Russian company said in a release. Braidy would hold the other 60 percent share in the plant, which will produce aluminum sheet mostly for the transportation industry, including the automotive, aerospace and marine sectors.
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After all the aluminum tariffs and their repercussions to help our aluminum producers, this deal would insure their demise by exclusively providing a market purchaser for Russian aluminum that would then be made into rolled aluminum products for our government contracts in defense, aerospace, naval building, and transportation, along with national infrastructure and building markets.
That destroys our producers rather than helping them. Who came up with this as well as the deal which gives 40% ownership for $200 million that seems a small purchase price compared to its percentage of profits and opportunities for Rusal to have an automatic purchaser of its smelted aluminum produced in Russia, not America.
Maybe Moscow Mitch wanted the jobs for Kentucky without looking at the details very closely or considering how it would impact American industries trying to compete with Rusal in the global marketplace. It is a subsidized takeover of market opportunities that would otherwise be available to American aluminum producers.
- cricketdiane, 08-15-2019
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The Biggest Aluminum Producers of 2017 – (US is eighth down the list with 2.3 mmt)
The Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa Inc.), America’s largest aluminum producer, has been reducing capacity, focussing on the development and sale of value-added products.
Founded in Pittsburgh, Penn., in 1888, Alcoa operates in some 15 countries worldwide.
Key aluminum assets are located in Iceland, Australia, Canada, Indiana and Texas.
Website: www.alcoa.com/
https://www.thebalance.com/the-10-biggest-aluminum-producers-2014-2339724
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US Primary Aluminum Production Charts – 2019
(shows US production up, and so now we’ll give our market to Russia apparently since Moscow Mitch wants that for Kentucky. Hope their polluting history doesn’t carry over to the US.)
https://www.aluminum.org/sites/default/files/USPrimaryProduction072019.pdf
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Also –
A court has ruled in favor of the Krasnoyarsk Environmental Protection Prosecutor’s Office, which requested that the court order Rusal Achinsk to pay 408 million rubles ($7.6 million) for contaminating farmland.
The lawsuit was filed after an audit, which showed that Rusal Achinsk contaminated over 10 hectares (100,000 square meters) of farmland with industrial waste water that seeped from a sludge depository due to the lack of proper containment equipment.
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During sanctions, Rusal lost some of its customers, including Novelis Corp, the world’s biggest producer of rolled aluminum products. The company is partially resuming deliveries to them but admits that it will have a chance to regain all its clients only when contracts for 2020 are signed.
To date, we have already resumed deliveries to the American market,” Nikitin said. Nikitin also said that there were no issues with Russia’s alumina supplies from the Mykolaiv (Nikolayev) plant in Ukraine.
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This is interesting too from the sidebar on that page –
15:20 Russian propaganda targets CNN reporter following exclusive reporting on country’s secret army in Africa – media
Read more on UNIAN: https://www.unian.info/economics/10501422-reuters-russia-s-rusal-resumes-aluminum-supplies-to-u-s-market.html
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And this one –
11:20 Russian propaganda TV channel accused of inciting hatred in Latvia
Read more on UNIAN: https://www.unian.info/economics/10501422-reuters-russia-s-rusal-resumes-aluminum-supplies-to-u-s-market.html
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