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 […]
Asian Chemical Connections
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 […]
Increasing Risks Of Financial Crisis By End-Year
A sign that the central bank “put option” has come to an end By John Richardson EVER since 2008 there has been been a fantastic “put option” which has made the fortunes of many financial and commodity market investors. This involved assuming that every time bad economic news emerged, central banks would ramp-up economic stimulus. […]
Six More Years Of America First: Implications For Global Petchems
By John Richardson DESPITE all the criticism surrounding President Trump’s handling of the Helsinki summit, 79% of Republican voters said that they approved of how he handled his meeting with President Putin, according to Axios/SurveyMonkey. The Wall Street Journal also reports that in 1992, 15 of the 20 most manufacturing intensive Congressional districts in America […]
China Debt Squeeze, Trade War, Dollar Strength Pose Major Risks
By John Richardson IT DIDN’T matter if there was any truth behind the stories people used to tell each other about the Chinese economy as it underwent an unprecedented period of growth in 2009-2014. All that mattered was that a lot of people were making a lot of money as petrochemicals and polymers sales volumes […]
Prepare For A More Regionalised, Fragmented Polymers World
By John Richardson THE above map global shows our base-case forecasts for global trade flows of HDPE, LLDPE and PP in 2025. It is the result of lots of hard work and smart thinking around feedstock costs, logistics costs and demand growth etc. and is a good start to your scenario planning process. The map […]
US-China Trade War To Accelerate As Restrictions On US Petchem Exports Increase
By John Richardson TAKE a broader view of US-China trading relationship and the picture looks very different from the straightforward, headline big US deficit, as James Kynge points out in this important article in the FT. It is the presence of US companies in China that also matters. The most recent data, which is for […]
China Tariffs On US Petchem Feedstocks To Reshape Global Trade And Investment
By John Richardson CHINA’S planned tariffs against US petrochemical feedstock exports threaten a major upheaval of global trade flows in the feedstocks. The tariffs could also strengthen petrochemicals feedstock trading relationships between China and its fellow Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) country members. The Middle East may in particular step into the breach to supply […]
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