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 […]
Asian Chemical Connections
How US Could Be Squeezed Out Of Europe’s Polyethylene Market
By John Richardson EARLIER this year a commonly held view was that globalisation would slip into reverse gear with the very real prospect of a global trade war. But this view didn’t take into account China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative, the launch of which predated the election of Donald Trump as US president […]
Rising Trade Tensions Could Threaten US Petchems Exports
By John Richardson THE Trump administration is holding out against a capital increase for the World Bank unless the bank reforms the way that it lends money to China, according to the FT. China is the World Bank’s biggest borrower. Scott Morris, a former US treasury official, views this as strategic, as it is enabling […]
“War of Words” On Global Trade To Continue
By John Richardson WE remain in almost entirely uncharted territory despite the confidence of US stock markets. Take as an example the communique released after this weekend’s G20 meeting where traditional language about the importance of open global markets was dropped in order to keep the US happy. The wording of this joint statement was […]
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 […]
Regional Trading Blocs: Globalisation In Reverse
By John Richardson HAS anyone out there considered the possibility that we could end up with a series of regional trading blocs as globalisation goes into rapid reverse? Or have chemicals companies instead come up with one-dimensional outlooks that assume the world will become more, rather than less, open, thus making it easy to shift […]
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