By John Richardson THE BETTER that things get in the US (provided you own equities and are not on a zero-hours contract) the worse things become in emerging markets. Despite a weaker greenback on a trade-weighted basis, the investor sell-off in emerging markets continued last Thursday, wrote Bloomberg in this article. The Lira was for […]
Asian Chemical Connections
PE Margins Fall As Trade War Threatens Two Entirely Separate Trading Blocks
By John Richardson LET’S FIRST of all take a close look at what the above chart is telling us about the damage already done to polyethylene (PE) margins before considering what could happen next. US high-density PE (HDPE) margins are 47% lower in the year-to-date versus to 2017 and low-density (LDPE) margins are 45% lower. […]
Why Trade War Will Continue Throughout 2019 And Impact On Polyethylene
By John Richardson A MISCALCULATION by the White House could be one of several reasons why the US/China trade war continues throughout 2019 – and possibly even beyond that. This is the idea that China is losing the trade war and so will soon be forced to the negotiating table with compromises that meet American […]
Chinese PE Tariffs Come Into Effect: The Impact On The Global Business
By John Richardson CHINA’S 25% import tariffs on all grades of US high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and 93% of the grades of linear-low density (LLDPE), which came into effect yesterday, look set to cause major damage to the global PE business. One of the biggest casualties could be the earnings of US PE producers. We shouldn’t […]
US Risks Losing Access To 82% Of Global PE Consumption Growth, 80% Of Exports
By John Richardson PERHAPS this week’s low-level trade talks between the US and China shouldn’t only be judged on the basis that they are low level, involving officials of mid-level seniority who are therefore not empowered to achieve major breakthroughs. The talks on 22-23 August (23 August is when 25% Chinese polyethylene (PE) tariffs on […]
US PE Exports: Impact Of China Tariffs On Smaller Markets
By John Richardson LET US assume for downside planning purposes that the Chinese 25% tariffs against all US high-density polyethylene (HDPE) exports and 93% of US linear-low density (LLDPE) imports remain in place for the rest of this year and into 2019, once they come into force on 23 August. This might not happen, of […]
China tariffs: Quantifying The Impact On US Petchems And Energy
By John Richardson PRESIDENT Trump believes he is winning the trade war with China because of the much greater strength of US stock markets versus their Chinese counterparts. At the start of last week, for example, the two major Chinese indexes had lost a quarter of their value since the start of the year whereas […]
China 25% Tariffs On US PE Imports Extended To All HDPE, Nearly All LLDPE
By John Richardson CHINA has extended its 25% import tariffs on US polyethylene (PE) to include all grades of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) that it imported in 2017 and 93% of the grades of linear-low density PE (LLDPE) that it imported in that same year. Also affected, as you can see from the above table, are […]
China’s Latest Threat Of US Methanol Tariff Perfectly Targeted
By John Richardson CHINA crunches exactly the same data as the rest of us, as I warned on Friday when discussing polyethylene (PE). China’s government is very aware of the dominant role China plays in global energy, petrochemicals and polymers markets. In many energy and petchems products, no other country or region comes close to being […]
Polyethylene: Damage From Trade War Should Not Be Underestimated
By John Richardson THE argument that the US-China trade war will have a minimal impact on the global polyethylene (PE) business is based on two assumptions, both of which I will argue could easily prove to be wrong. Firstly, some commentators quite rightly point out that the proposed Chinese tariffs on US PE exports only […]
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