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| Russian aluminum will save the American economy |
| 2023-02-28 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Sergey Savchuk [RIA] While the European Union agreed on the tenth package of sanctions against our country on the fourth day, another insidious blow was dealt from across the ocean. The White House announced that the United States is imposing a 200 percent duty on the import of Russian aluminum and products from March 10. This news, as usual, was immediately picked up by all sorts of free and democratic resources, presenting it as another murderous sanctions from hell. But in order to understand the true prospects of the ongoing processes, it is necessary to know the basic numbers and mechanics of aluminum production and trade. To date, this metal is second in demand only to steel and has penetrated almost all areas of modern production, reaching a global output of 65 million tons per year. Contrary to the crafty Western theory of the free market, where there is no place for monopoly and everything is regulated by free competition, the vast majority of specialized enterprises in any country in the world are vertically integrated holdings that include production at three key stages: bauxite mines, alumina and aluminum smelters. Russia is no exception in this regard. There are several dozen aluminum producers in our country, among which the major ones include Volgograd (VgAZ), Irkutsk (Rusal-IrkAZ), Kandalaksha (KAZ), Boguchansky (BoAZ), Novokuznetsk (NkAZ), Krasnoyarsk (Rusal Krasnoyarsk), Bratsk ("Rusal Bratsk") and Sayanogorsk (SAZ) aluminum plants. Among the medium-sized ones, one can note the Ankuver plant ( Vladivostok ). Even with such a variety of powerful enterprises, our country is not the main world producer. This title rightfully belongs to China , which, with a huge margin from other competitors, produces about 37 million tons of aluminum in ingots and in the form of other products. Russia is in desperate competition for second place with India : both countries produced 3.6 million each in 2021. Canada is on their heels with 3.1 million tons. And now let's look very carefully at the list of the world's main exporters of aluminum products. This will help us to meaningfully move on to the next part of our conversation. As you might expect, China is the world's top seller. The Celestial Empire sells almost $35 billion worth of aluminum every year. Next come Germany (18.8 billion), Canada and the United States (12 billion each), India (nine billion) and only then Russia with a very modest figure of 8.7 billion dollars in turnover. About Germany some other time, but Canada and the USA are very interesting to us. The North American team, with the support of loyal vassals in Europe , attacked the Russian Rusal with sanctions for a reason, and long before the start of the NWO. The Russian company owns the richest deposits of bauxite in many parts of the world, and it was vital for the Americans and Canadians to change this state of affairs. At the same time, as is absolutely always the case in Western unions, all such associations are situational, unreliable, and Bolivar never takes out two. In June 2018, then-U.S. President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Canadian aluminum producers. Just like in the current situation with Russian metallurgists, protective duties of 250 percent were introduced on any core products. Canada then estimated its losses at $12.5 billion. Despite the ostentatious unity, the Canadians staged such a huge scandal that the very existence of the US-Canadian-Mexican trade union NAFTA was threatened . Ottawa and Mexico City directly threatened to break off trade relations with Washington , which nevertheless lifted the restrictions a year later. However, the desired result during this time was obtained. We have repeatedly said that any geopolitical or economic event cannot be considered in isolation from other processes. The global economy is a complex system of communicating vessels, checks and balances, where major players build multi-level and multi-way strategies. So while Western pundits and Ukrainian television are excited about the fresh sanctions against Russian aluminum, two banks that are part of the US Federal Reserve institutions have published calculations that show that the likelihood of a severe recession in the US economy in the coming months is 63 percent . This is the worst figure in the last forty years. What follows is simple arithmetic. As of 2022, the US imported 5.9 million tons of aluminum. Russia exported 3.5 million, of which only 21,000 tons went to the United States. At the same time, our exports to North America have been falling for a long time and systematically, while in general they are growing all over the world. According to the Federal Customs Service of Russia, in 2021 the volume of foreign deliveries increased by a third and amounted to $8.7 billion in monetary terms. The conclusion here is simple: the introduction of US duties on the Russian aluminum sector will have approximately no effect. What is the essence of what is happening and why these gestures of the White House? It's all pretty prosaic. As in the case of Canada three years ago, the US administration is frantically trying, if not to save its economy, then at least to minimize future problems. Blocking import routes in the presence of own production should spur a huge production cluster, a key employer and tax payer. A simple search suggests that the main consumers of aluminum in the United States are industries such as locomotive, railcar and shipbuilding, the automotive industry (remember, America is the most automotive nation in the world), the space industry, the production of electronics, construction and, of course, the production of lines transmission lines in all their vast diversity. Just a year ago, the Biden administration launched a national infrastructure modernization program with $300 billion just to replace old power lines. That is, Washington staged a circus show for its allies, portraying unity and allegedly unbending anti-Russian will, but in reality, the price of such sanctions is worthless. And the main thing lies in something completely different, namely, in the desire to lay straws under your unpleasantly losing weight sides and turn virtual money into physical infrastructure. The literary professor Preobrazhensky, if he lived in our time, would certainly recommend not reading Western newspapers in the morning. And if you really read, then only with complex knowledge, so as not to pass for a simple-minded fool. Yevgeni Alekseyevich Preobrazhensky was a Soviet economist executed by Stalin in 1937. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #3 Doubtful. Aluminum is made where electricity is cheap since it takes a lot of it to move from bauxite. Russia had plenty of energy available as does the US (for now. Fuck you enviros) The US imported such a small amount as most of our bauxite comes from Australia, Brazil and Canada. All friendly nations and Australian bauxite is cheaper now that they have stopped shipping theirs to China. So, we really don't need Russia. Nice fantasy though. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2023-02-28 14:36 |
| #2 And as usual, there are significant lies of omission in that the Bidencrat administration is the same machine that's been kneecapping domestic aluminum production by way of energy policy over the past decade and a half. So many faces, each coming with multiple sides of their mouth, from both Russians and Das Bidens, that we have to put up with. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2023-02-28 13:15 |
| #1 Interesting, if wordy, analysis. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2023-02-28 09:42 |