By John Richardson CHINA might still be in a race against time to achieve enough levels of innovation to escape its middle-income trap. This could mean that it has no choice but to reach a deal with the US on trade that gives it continued access to US intellectual property. Such a deal would avert […]
Asian Chemical Connections
US-China Trade War Draws Closer: Impact On Petrochemicals
By John Richardson NOTHING that has happened over the last 24 hours should take you by surprise. Your petrochemicals company has had ample time to prepare for the US-China trade war that has now become a much stronger possibility following the US decision to impose $60bn of new tariffs on Chinese imports. Shortly after President […]
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 […]
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 […]
Brexit, US-China Trade Talks: Time Is Running Out
By John Richardson BY MARCH 2019, Britain needs to have successfully negotiated the terms of Brexit – and be certain that when the clock stops ticking the terms of the deal will work in practice. And the task of hitting this already ambitious deadline has just been made even harder by the snap General Election British […]
Trump-Xi Summit Highlights What’s At Stake For US Petchems
By John Richardson THE above chart, showing US linear-low density polyethylene (LLDPE) expansions and rising surpluses, is just one jigsaw piece of only one global manufacturing chain that could be completely reshaped by the Trump administration’s approach to free trade. This approach is today under the spotlight as President Trump and President Xi Jinping of […]
Trumponomics And A Global Recession
By John Richardson FIRST of all there was no chance he would win the nomination. No chance at all. Then nearly all the election pundits said it was almost impossible that he could beat Hillary Clinton because he had such a narrow Electoral College path to the White House. Now we are being told that […]
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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