By John Richardson THE first ramification of the Turkey crisis is that the collapse of the lira raises questions over how Turkish importers will be able to afford the dollars to pay for some of the polyolefins imported since the crisis began. Then comes the issue of what happens to Turkish polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene […]
Asian Chemical Connections
US-China Trade War: Global Recession, Collapse Of Polyethylene Markets
By John Richardson YOU have had more than 12 months to prepare for a global trade war that is becoming ever-more likely, almost by the day. This would lead to a new global recession given the shaky nature of today’s “economic recovery”. President Trump overnight Asia time announced plans for a further $100bn of tariffs […]
Global Trade War: $12.4bn of US Petchems Exports At Risk
By John Richardson THE CUMULATIVE negative effect on global GDP as more and more countries became involved in a trade war is estimated by the above table on the left, from a research paper by economists as the Australian National University. The table shows the impact of each country imposing an extra 10% tariffs on […]
US Import Tariff Decision: Impact On Polyethylene And The Global Economy
By John Richardson THE PROSPECT of a US-China trade war has edged closer as a result of President Trump’s announcement yesterday that the US will impose 25% import tariffs on steel and 10% import tariffs on aluminium. Countries hit hard by the tariffs will include China and Canada. We luckily avoided a trade war in […]
Climate Change, Extreme Weather: Implications For Chemicals Companies
By John Richardson The greater frequency of extreme weather events presents a huge challenge for chemicals companies. Take Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma as the most obvious current examples. Weather forecasting service AccuWeather writes in this article: This is the first time in the history of record keeping that two Category 4 or higher hurricanes, […]
US Trade Policy Has So Far Bought China More Time…
…..But any number of outcomes remain possible, which underlines the fact that we live in a world of elevated political risk. Chemicals companies must, as a result, build multiple scenarios for future economic growth and trade flows. By John Richardson TIME was a commodity that China didn’t think it had very much of as recently […]
US Polyethylene Industry: Scenarios For 2017-2020
By John Richardson IT has been a remarkably strong few years for the US polyethylene (PE) business. The shale gas revolution has sent ethane costs plummeting, resulting in the kind of margins that you can see in the above chart. Lower oil prices have made naphtha cracking a lot more competitive of late, but the […]
Southeast Asia: Confronting The Real Downside Potential
By John Richardson SOUTHEAST ASIA’S (SEA) economies can be divided into two main categories. These are the heavily export-exposed economies of Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore and the two countries with the biggest internal demand drivers – Indonesia and the Philippines. Next come the smaller emerging SEA economies with tremendous longer-term potential, such as Myanmar […]
What Exclusion From China’s One Belt, One Road Looks Like
By John Richardson IS the whole world really turning again free trade? No, if you consider the potential improvement in trade flows between the 65 mainly developing countries which make up China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative. What we could instead see is the creation of the world’s biggest free-trade bloc, accounting for 40% […]
China And A Breakdown In Free Trade: Scenarios For Petrochemicals
By John Richardson MY blog post last Friday, on the threat to the petrochemicals industry of a retreat in global free trade, has gained a great deal of interest. This is good as this is an essential debate. Today I am therefore going to take this important debate further by considering in more detail how […]
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