Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wants the EU to hike tariffs on China just as the US did.
Curbs on Cheap Chinese Exports
The Guardian reports Janet Yellen urges EU to join US in curbs on cheap Chinese exports
Janet Yellen, the US treasury secretary, has urged the EU to intervene urgently to dampen the growing export levels of Chinese cut-price green technology including solar panels and wind turbines, pushing European leaders to move to a full-scale trade war.
At the same time she urged German bank executives on Tuesday to step up efforts to comply with sanctions against Russia and shut down efforts to circumvent them to avoid potential penalties themselves that could see the US cut them off from dollar access.
Her remarks, in Frankfurt, come just hours after the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, gave her strongest hint yet that the EU would join the US and impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles after a soon-to-be completed investigation into alleged state subsidies into the automotive industry in China.
Wind turbine manufacturers in the EU have protested that Chinese rivals are undercutting them by 50% in a move that is appealing to cash-strapped state and regional authorities facing targets in reductions of greenhouse gases.
China has signaled it will retaliate against any tariffs with potential duties on French brandy, EU wine and dairy products.
Von der Leyen said Europe would take a different approach to the US. While an increase in tariffs is expected, they are unlikely to match the rate imposed by the US.
Von der Leyen told the Financial Times that China had “massive overcapacity” that was “flooding” the EU market with “artificially cheap products”.
She said she expected the investigation into alleged Chinese state subsidies launched last September and due to be finished by 5 June, to conclude there were “excessive production subsidies”.
Wind Power
In the effort to produce more clean energy from wind, the economic and energy illiterates would rather pay 100 percent more for wind turbines.
Autos
Despite the fact that China sells no cars in the US, Biden Wants EVs so Badly That He Will Quadruple Tariffs on Them
Astute readers will immediately notice the title of this post makes no sense. It’s not supposed to. But it is exactly what President Biden is doing.
Cheaper Houses? Who Needs Em?
What About Mattresses?
That’s a good question. For the answer, please see Having Trouble Sleeping? Can You Afford a New Mattress?
Protectionists want 745% tariffs on mattresses. Prepare to pay much more despite having the highest prices in the world already.
Joe Biden vs Joe Biden on Tariffs, a Green Trade War Is Underway
The president announced huge new tariffs on May 14.
The Above Tweet was from June 11, 2019.
For discussion, please see Joe Biden vs Joe Biden on Tariffs, a Green Trade War Is Underway
Look at the energy tax credits Biden is giving Tesla. That is on top of huge tax credits to consumers who buy made-in-America EVs. And we complain about China subsidies.
Joe Biden’s changing story of tariffs would be funny if it was not so damaging and his hypocrisy so large.
Just read an article
Germany has too many solar panels, and it’s pushed energy prices into negative territory
TSLA pays $1 for their facility, because they employed some people. It was an interesting conversation with the guy who leases it to them on how they get paid.
Force China to import UN climate change mandates (basically opium again). Bring the Chinese to their knees.
TGT is getting hammered today. I have a feeling that no one at Target knows anything about economics.
Lots of big pharma in the gainers today.
https://finance.yahoo.com/screener/predefined/day_gainers/?offset=0&count=100
Free trade is dead. Long live free trade! Marxism is dead too, but that doesn’t stop 2nd and 3rd order adherents from babbling nonsensically about bankrupt concepts. And so it goes.
I’d much rather have FAIR TRADE
want to sell $billion to merika
then buy $billion 1st
End The Fed, and that outcome is guaranteed.
Of course; paraphrasing Keynes from his economist days: Not one man in a million….
While the remaining 999,999 idiots, can be reliably counted on to be indoctrinated into blind faith in every possible other pile of trivially braindead nonsense instead. The next “Dear Leader” will……. NONE of which has ANY merit. At all. Ever. Instead being all, 100%, pure idiocy. By, and for, pure idiots. And noone else.
Life’s not Fair
Trade deficit is inevitable consequence of being world’s main reserve currency. When rest of world is even worse than we are at managing government spending, the $Billions ARE the export.
I wonder what life in the US would be like if it turned into a gerontocracy like the USSR………oh, wait……
Putin is only 71. We are the ones with the gerontocracy.
If you believe that Green Tech is not green and that its manufacturing is wasteful, then it goes without saying that you should be in favor of trade policies that make them prohibitively expensive to import and use. I am a bit surprised that instead of being happy that the high tariffs would cut green tech use some people here decry the tariffs as a travesty and that we should have no tariffs so that we can import even more Green Tech goods that they see as ultimately destructive for the environment. The logic escapes me.
Everyone in government is free to be illogical until they run out of other people’s money to spend.
There is no serious analysis of what a future looks like.
A system which has been developing since 18th century, based upon internal combustion engines, reliably produces and delivers, goods and services to whole Nations.
This whole methodology is now being mandated out of existence and forced to be replaced by unproven technologies which yet have to show they can stand the test of Time.
This new technological system is unable to stand on its own, but only exists thru subsidies from Government. Without those subsidies these new Green Technologies fail at most Basic levels of Reliability or Capacity.
That inflation is running Hot is no mystery. It will only get worse as the source of Modern existence which happens to be Internal Combustion Engines making the World as it is known possible, gets phased out.
There are very serious implications coming with unwinding the Industrial Revolution and replacing it with something coming out of Politicians mouths.
That’s a joke right?? Electric cars are not New technology.
MG4 EV, car of the year in 2023 and 2024, 330 miles, made in the UK & SAIC, can cut inflation.
SAIC is GM partner in China.
The WEST is screwed … their cost of production of just about everything is too high … Tariffs are just another way of Taxing Consumers … What goes around comes around … America offshored it’s manufacturing years ago and Germany is finished as a manufacturing power in Europe and it will take years to come back if ever … Get used to the new World of economic advantage … whether it be availability of resources, cheap labor, capital or government subsidies… it’s here to stay …
Put the pipe down and write a correct, coherent sentence for once in your life. Sheesh.
The tarrifs protect jobs in the green energy sector. Also in some ways China is starting to turn into a bad actor supporting Putin and threatening Taiwan. National security vs global warming with green sector production to get off of fossil fuels. We live in an imperfect world. China is subsidizing their industry much stronger than we do here, while a significant group of Americans say we should subsidize at all.
Taking away the tarrifs just gives China all the muscle in the world.
“The tarrifs protect jobs”
Not jobs. Makework positions. For which there is no use, since the products are already available for less of a resource outlay than is required to create playgrounds where the beneficiary sadsacks can then sit and pretend to do work.
The real consequences of the CRIMINALLY STUPID open border to import criminals from around the world to vote Democrat!!.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/immigration-world-news/the-migrant-crisis-is-how-rome-fell-its-our-turn-this-time/?
My review of the blatant DemoRat engineered CRIME to destroy the country I penned here.
The Demented Ignorant Fool illegally installed as POTUS!!
For those that may be thinking that the collective events in the country are just random occurrences, Open Border, high fuel prices, etc,
please read these articles on how this is planned, orchestrated, and executed with the specific intents of malicious malice aforethought
to achieve the end that was laid out for Obama when he was being indoctrinated in Chicago and why Soros chose him,
groomed and financed him, to do what is being done today in Obama’s third term using the Demented One from the stolen election.
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
The Cloward Piven / Saul Alinsky / Obama strategy to destroy the country. Full on NOW. A primer.
Obama has Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett and Victoria Nuland in Biden’s control group, for what is now obvious to be Obama’s third term!!
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/politics/the-collapse-of-the-usa-the-rule-of-law/
More detailed information.
https://cei.org/opeds_articles/study-saul-alinsky-to-understand-barack-obama/
Alinsky lays out to take the country down.
https://www.openculture.com/2017/02/13-rules-for-radicals.html
A fresh review of keen interest.
https://www.cairco.org/reference/cloward-piven-strategy-fundamentally-transforming-america
Another very well-done fresh review!
https://hannenabintuherland.com/culturalanalysis/the-cloward-piven-strategy-western-marxist-intellectuals-are-the-useful-idiots-to-speed-up-the-fall-of-capitalism-by-manufacturing-crisis/
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocKIpVyEt1rhC9RV-HbPgZGa_MPF5oad0O8TtYDuZkJqzleKNw=s40-p-moReplyForward
You received this via BCC, so you can’t react with an emoji
Pshhh, you don’t think the Republicans including Trump allow however many immigrants in for their cheap labor purposes? All this phoney tough talk about ‘stopping illegals’ or whatever is just pandering to the xenophobic fears of the red state voters. And the left leaders plays their part of fake sympathy to make their base seem like they care but it’s mainly to distract and divide Americans from uniting against their vote buying deficit spending mountain of debt that we’ll all pay for with more inflation.
There is a lot of Truth to Pandering’s comment. Take crop picking of Florida and Texas citrus fruits for example. Going to export all of them too? I don’t think so.
If I buy a Honda generator and spin my electric meter backwards I can make a profit.
Mish, it is apparent that you are a doctrinaire free trader in the Adam Smith mold. But even Smith had exceptions, one being national security. You can drive a truck through that idea, but national security in an industrial world surely entails maintenance of an industrial base. Whether or not this applies to imports of EVs is debatable, yet it is undeniable that the U.S. has exported great chunks of its industrial base.
We can argue that imports of this or that product does not matter, but the industrial base does matter. I don’t see any acknowledgement of that from you. So what do we need to keep our industrial base, or as Walter Wriston scared me by arguing almost 50 years ago when I was a college undergraduate who read the Wall Street Journal and thought about it, is it enough for America to be an information economy that outsourcing the making of things to anyone and everyone?
Well said. Looking forward to Mish answer.
I agree with you. Without an industrial base a country cannot secure its freedom. Freedom isn’t free as the saying goes.
Trade should be free of tariffs between allies as well as with countries with similar values. But relying on China for anything is not only undercutting your own industry but financing theirs.
And tariffs on Canadian lumber is just stupid. Should be completely free trade with Canada. Ditto trade with UK, EU, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore,Australia and the Pacific island nations.
It took a while but most people have woken up to the dangers of letting your industrial base be degraded by the CCP’s trade policies that are specifically designed to do that. Europe will follow the US with their own tariffs very soon. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
What about a disinformation economy?
Just this in the WSJ today:
Apparently the largest domestic ammunition supplier?
or our oil refineries:
Would you say Switzerland has and maintains national security? It doesn’t have any industrial base to speak of. There are other countries in a similar situation. To maintain national security you need an effective military (whether it’s conventional or just a nuclear deterrent like North Korea has).
The problem with conflating industrial base with national security is that suddenly every industrial industry becomes a matter of national security. The reason of course is protectionism, because those in that industry want to protect their jobs even if they no longer make economic sense.
People are worried about EVs made in China and losing our auto industry. Would losing making autos in America really destroy national security? Consider Cuba. After the US embargo in 1960, they no longer got US cars or parts. Yet today, almost 70 years later they are still driving US cars made in the 50s by infinitely maintaining them with locally made parts. So lets say we get Chinese EVs. If for some reason they ever cut us off, we could do what Cuba did and maintain the existing cars but unlike Cuba we could restart our auto industry (it would not take 70 years to do so, maybe 5 at the very most).
And by the way, it’s HIGHLY unlikely they’d ever cut us off. What happens is countries get into a symbiotic relationship. They need our market as much as we need the cars. So if they cut us off, they’d put millions of their own people out of work which would lead to a lot of unrest and even though they aren’t as free as we are, China is not eager for millions of unrestful people due to cutting off EVs.
Switzerland takes their security seriously and has rapidly increased their spending from a low level after Russia invaded Ukraine. All males go through military training and keep their guns in their homes. Each dwelling must by law have a bomb shelter. Their armed forces need more modern arms and they just bought a large amount of F-35s from the US for over $6 billion and this is for a country whose neighbors are peaceful.
Taking Cuban car from the ’50s as an example is curious because those cars are mainly for the tourist industry and Cuba has and had had for 50 years access for trade from almost the whole world besides the US and most car brands there are what you see in most underdeveloped countries. Anyway, comparing ancient cars in Cuba to high-tech industries is useful. If we lose knowlege of how to make something like semiconductors and then try to make them again, then we would be like those Cuban cars from the 1950’s. That is so hopelessly out of date that that tourists would come to see them.
Would China cut us off? You can bet your family jewels on it if they see if that gives them a supreme advantage.
I agree with you on Switzerland. They have excellent national security. All without an industrial base. Thus proving you don’t need an industrial base to have national security. In other words, they are not correlated.
As for cars, the idea that you ‘forget’ how to make stuff is silly. Absolutely no one manufacturers things by hand and human ‘experience’ any more. It’s 90% robots and computers with a small amount of human oversight. There isn’t any special human training needed to recover your car industry. You just look at the blueprints and restart the industry. That’s the miracle of modern engineering and exactly why China has so easily stolen all the IP. You can’t steal human experience, but you can steal engineering.
If American kids could just turn in their parents who are then hauled away to reeducation camps or simply disappeared, and everyone starts riding a bicycle in every city or urban area, we could become China, but even better …
“..but national security in an industrial world surely entails maintenance of an industrial base.”
But only because national security in an industrial world, requires sufficient industrial competence to be able to build something, anything, competitively. Merely pretending you have an “industrial base”, by propping up some theater looking vaguely like one, with money redistributed from people and industries who are still doing something competitively enough to have anything to redistribute away; accomplishes exactly a lot less than nothing.
End The Fed, $20/oz dollar, no arbitrary shakedowns attempted passed of as “taxes”; and America will regain a competitive industrial base again. Don’t; and it won’t. Simple as that.
This is the story I’ve been explaining here for 4 years now.
Because of global warming, the world wants more renewable energy and less fossil fuels. The fossil fuel industry has gotten the message and have reduced capex for the last decade, which will result is less future supply of fossil fuels.
But the world is not building enough renewables to replace fossil fuels. And tariffs only make it harder to build those renewables. Every year we need more energy. So fossil fuel demand keeps increasing, at the same time that we are attempting to restrict supply. The net result is upward pressure on fossil fuel prices.
Got oil?
I got oil, insurance, food, big pharma, utilities, and T-bills. All for the long term except T-bills of course….
Ironically, all those things are influenced by the non-existent climate change people don’t believe in. I’ll ride that disbelief all the way to the bank. ….$….$
Agreed. I have other investments as well, but oil and gas stocks are still the largest weight and have certainly done spectacularly well over the last 4 years.
Always appreciate your suggestions.
Thanks!
Nobody wants EVs … except Jeff Green. Hey Jeff… try haggling with the Tesla dealer… you should be able to get at least half off
EV maker Li Auto’s plunged 18.7 per cent to HK$81.20, its biggest drop on record, after it reported a 37 per cent decline in first quarter earnings to 591.1 million yuan (US$81.7 million) amid a bruising price war. Its peers also tumbled with BYD declining 4.1 per cent to HK$217.60, Geely losing 3.9 per cent to HK$10.22, and Xpeng tumbling 9.9 per cent to HK$30.85 ahead of its earnings announcement later today.
Hong Kong stocks retreat as sentiment cools, Li Auto sinks 19% after dismal earnings (yahoo.com)
Xpeng did very well. Shares rose after their results were better than expected.
Though I would not invest in these companies as competition is fierce, leading to lower prices and poor margins.
You may not like EVs, but they are not going away anytime soon. Sales will continue to grow each year. There are still people who want them and they don’t really care what YOU think about it.
Though I personally believe that PHEV sales will grow much faster as the dual fuel system meets more peoples needs.
And as I frequently say, you should be cheering for EV sales as they help to keep gasoline demand and gasoline prices lower than they would otherwise be.
Sales WERE growing … as in past tense…. now auto makers are slashing their EV lines cuz demand is waning cuz they do not make sense…
Did you notice Tesla has cut 20% of its workers — and their vehicles are being parked cuz there is diminishing demand?
Get with the program. EVs are dying.
Good riddance coal-powered pcs of junk
You are confusing a sneeze with pneumonia.
The numbers beg to differ from your narrative. Sales are still growing.
Worldwide monthly EV sales:
Jan 2024: 1.1 million, up from 660,000 in Jan 2023
Feb 2024: 1.2 million, up 23%
Do you have different numbers or are you just making it all up?
China counts the EVs that they are parking in lots as sold.
And those are HUGE numbers.
You are lacking the logic gene — if sales are growing — why are the legacy automakers slashing EV production – why is Tesla slashing its workforce?
Trust my logic – or continue to trust bbccnn.
You just make sh*t up. You never post any numbers. Your comments are all useless crap that you pull out of your ass. Why should I believe anything you say?
China’s ambitions to seize a significant portion of the European electric vehicle (EV) market has resulted in thousands of unsold Chinese EVs inundating European ports. Some of these vehicles have remained unsold for over a year, with the backup delaying many other shipments of goods throughout the continent.
The overflow of Chinese EVs has led to congestion at European ports, with vehicles piling up, exacerbating logistical bottlenecks and complicating efforts to sell them. In many cases, Chinese automakers are sending these vehicles over without a plan in place to sell them, instead using the parking lots of ports throughout Europe as storage until they are purchased.
https://san.com/cc/chinese-evs-flood-european-ports-as-some-cars-remain-unsold-for-over-a-year/
And https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2024/05/04/belgium-s-ports-drowning-under-glut-of-chinese-electric-cars-some-are-parked-here-for-a-year-sometimes-a-year-and-a-half_6670373_19.html
China’s Abandoned, Obsolete Electric Cars Are Piling Up in CitiesA subsidy-fueled boom helped build China into an electric-car giant but left weed-infested lots across the nation brimming with unwanted battery-powered vehicles. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/
The roughly 400 Tesla EVs that were sitting in the parking lot of a shuttered mall outside Saint Louis, Missouri might have been just the tip of the inventory iceberg, as more and more cars are being spotted by savvy internet users.
Thousands more, as it turns out. Besides the initial batch that the internet found sitting at the former Chesterfield Mall, several hundred Tesla-branded EVs are waiting to be delivered at the Quaker Bridge Mall in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, including some Cybertrucks, as seen in the video and Reddit post embedded below. https://insideevs.com/news/720018/thousands-unsold-tesla-evs-parking-lots/
Now that you are a bloodied pulp… would you like me to pound on you some more?
Hey Papa Dave – when can I expect your response?
The US & the EU should pay China back in kind
Flood global markets with artificially cheap manufacturesMandate overcapacity themselves using state subsidies
That’ll teach ’em
West always want cheap labour, cheap products with high quality. That’s why Western companies moved to Asia. Now China can manufacture qualitied products with cheap price.
So what is the purpose of sanctions?
Will consumer pay the cheap price – miserably failWill Chinese company bankrupt? – very unlikelyWill Western company become competitive? – very unlikely unless massive subsidy. 4. Politics – will get vote from unsuspected voters.
5 Trade deficit reduction – unlikely
6 Feel good – definitely. You do something.
Do I miss something or make mistakes?
Replacement of oil by alternative sources
While oil has many other important uses (lubrication, plastics, roadways, roofing) this section considers only its use as an energy source. The CMO is a powerful means of understanding the difficulty of replacing oil energy by other sources. SRI International chemist Ripudaman Malhotra, working with Crane and colleague Ed Kinderman, used it to describe the looming energy crisis in sobering terms.[13] Malhotra illustrates the problem of producing one CMO energy that we currently derive from oil each year from five different alternative sources. Installing capacity to produce 1 CMO per year requires long and significant development.
Allowing fifty years to develop the requisite capacity, 1 CMO of energy per year could be produced by any one of these developments:
4 Three Gorges Dams,[14] developed each year for 50 years, or
52 nuclear power plants,[15] developed each year for 50 years, or
104 coal-fired power plants,[16] developed each year for 50 years, or
32,850 wind turbines,[17][18] developed each year for 50 years, or
91,250,000 rooftop solar photovoltaic panels[19] developed each year for 50 years
The world consumes approximately 3 CMO annually from all sources. The table [10] shows the small contribution from alternative energies in 2006.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil
“That Tripe fella knows that my tariffs will harm consumer but not HIS tariffs because they MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” and I am trying to MAKE AMERICA BREAK AGAIN, DAY AFTER DAY.
COME ON, MAN, I mean we give them a break!
Oh, wait a minute, I meant to say we give them broken Tariffs. We broke the news on Tariffs. NO, we put tariffs on the News.
NO, wait a minute, I meant to say that Donald Tripe has a terrible reputation with that Burisma Affaird.
Oh, wait a Minute, I meant that my Corvette has Hunter Files in it from Work.
OH, WAIT A MINUTE, we have the greatest Economy since Jesus was born in my Home town, where I was a working man and helped him come down from the Cross.
His name is Tripe, RIGHT?”
LOL. But you only listed 7. Apparently, the white house had to retract or correct 9 factual Biden errors just yesterday.
This is wrong. NYS just installed 10 – 13.5 MW units off of Long Island. We will get max 70 MW out of that field. Our cost is almost $1B, yes that’s not a typo. For that money we could build 3 – 300 MW gas plants. BTW, all 70 MW will need to have a dedicated back up generator as the wind doesn’t always blow. Even if you cut the price of the units in half, which would probably fail faster than the European units, it still is way too much to pay for the meager amount of electricity they provide
I knew someone who worked at a solar panel factory years ago. It’s the kind of workplace where they park ambulances outside to take away the heat stroke casualties. Like the Amazon warehouses.
I supposed with all the migrants flooding in, they’ll be more than happy to take those jobs.