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 […]
Asian Chemical Connections
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 […]
The Three Essential Oil Price, Economic Growth Scenarios For Petchems
By John Richardson ALL the excitement over the positive impact of US tax cuts should be placed very firmly in this context from an early July Reuters article: US budget analysts generally look at the impact of tax changes over a ten-year period. The tax cuts approved at the end of 2017 were estimated to […]
China Scrap Plastic Restrictions Create 111 Million Tonne Problem, Opportunity
By John Richardson FOR so many years, developed countries were able to limit the extent to which they had to incinerate, landfill and properly recycle plastic waste by shipping the waste to developing countries, mainly to China. A Science Advances study highlights the extent to which the developed world depended on China as an easy […]
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 […]
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 […]
US-China Trade War Heavily Focused On Energy, Petchems
By John Richardson Normally, the blog only publishes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, but this week is an exceptional week because of the unfolding US-China trade war. So today I publish a post with more to follow tomorrow. YESTERDAY it became apparent that the US-China trade war includes a large number of energy, petchems, polymers […]
China Holds Most Of The Good Cards In Trade War With US
By John Richardson THE BREAKOUT of formal trade hostilities between China and the US, after more than a year of a “war of words” between the two countries, has occurred shortly after the EU responded to the US aluminium and steel tariffs with tariffs of its own against US goods. The much-feared tit-for-tat exchange of […]
G7 Meeting And The Risks For US Polyethylene Producers
By John Richardson IN All the noise, confusion and economic anxiety following last weekend’s very acrimonious G7 meeting in Canada, you might have failed to notice one very significant detail for the polymers industry. This was the refusal by the US and Japan to sign a plastics charter put forward by Canadian Prime Minister, Justin […]