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by slownews45
1667 days ago
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If people are upset by so called "dumping" - can't they just let China charge more than they would have for this aluminum? Aluminum has well known fixed costs in smelters, it's one of those products they use as an example where it may make economic sense to keep a smelter going (even if incurring losses / ) because the cost of shutdown. Ie, a potline may take up to a week just to "turn off" and a huge amount of effort - think a month of full time work + weeks of troubleshooting as annode effect issues, alumina concentration and other bits settle down. Don't you basically have to recondition (fully, replace all anodes, dig out the crust) the pots, and even then you may be taking a bit hit on pot life with the cool down / reheat cycle? I know the US has "anti dumping" rules regarding sugar as well - which I've been told contributes to a fair bit of corn syrup use. I'm not that hung-up on the US blocking imports of cheap materials (if that's what the US wants to do), but how does the US get some third party country to grab this quantity of metal? Ie, China could sell to other countries that are not as concerned about dumping. For example, why would a poor country without a local smelter even care about "dumping" - it would seem the cheap prices would be a subsidy in effect. |
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Because you can either be part of the group of powerful nations that rules the planet (including through various global and regional trade arrangements, international organizations, military power, sanctions, banking/finance and so on), or you can be on the outs with them and they may choose to brutalize you at some point in that case.
The US, as one example, has a lot of levers. If you decide to try to operate outside of its preferences, it can trivially wreck you if you're a small nation. China for its part increasingly swings a big influence hammer, which is why so many nations are very afraid to even offend them. If you're a stray midling country out there, you generally don't get to just do whatever you want to, even if you're not signed on to various limiting agreements around eg dumping. The more powerful nations have specific interests, a specific way they think the world should be, and they have no qualms about being randomly hypocritical (at your expense).
Even most larger nations have to be quite careful. The West is growing quite tired of Erdogan for example and they will further crash Turkey's economy (further amplify the damage Erdogan is already doing) if they think it'll help get rid of him. Turkey can rather easily be smashed at this juncture, potentially resulting in civil war, rolling instability for years or decades, quasi Syriaification.