FRom Greenpeace...for Harry

On the lunchtime news someone from the steel industry was blaming the high cost of electricity as a contributory cause of Tata's problems at Port Talbot, and that green policies and having to pay for the FIT was in part responsible.

Note I said 'contributory and 'in part'. It's obviously not the only cause.

Sounds like financial skullduggery rather than a technology problem.

well they are blaming the EU as well. In the USA they apparently slap a

The EU wont let us do that.

Well if we did put 266% on steel that would make goods manufactured here even less competitive against the Chinese ones. See Europe knows what it is doing even if you kippers don't.

Yes, the EU is driving up unemployment for the masses. The US is protecting its workers unlike the labour party in the UK who want lower wages and more taxes.

So they impose 260% duty on steel...

no bridges get built as they cost too much, no cars get sold as they cost too much, etc.

So lots of well paid steel workers and no customers anyway and the other workers get to be jobless too.

Just impossing duty doesn't always do what you want.

And we are the only steel maker in the EU?

Let's get this straight. You believe in putting tariffs on all imports where needed to protect UK jobs? Would that have included coal a few years ago?

There's lots of UK/European companies making/saving a fortune through the use of cheap Chinese steel. They are the ones opposing import taxes. Of course they ignore the fact that once the Chinese got a monopoly, they could charge what they liked.

Short termism again.

What us needed is a total ban on the import of Chinese steel until they stop "dumping".

But in these days of "globalisation" companies would move to places where there was no ban.

I think this (Tata) is one of those situations where it's impossible to satisfactorily fix because of a broken system (global trading).

For now, I'd like the government to think about import restrictions, nationalisation, and British steel only for domestic consumption. It really is a box of frogs, though, as the US experience has shown, with unforeseeable knock-ons. But at least the EU tried to do something to tame the excesses of the most bullish of tariff-mongers: the US . . .

So do you have a plan for the Steel industry then? Seems to me that the great capitalist machine is failing and the very things we want, power and steel are going to all be sacrificed to the great gods. These Gods are though, not in heaven, just in peoples blinkered minds. brain

Nothing broken about global trading, it has worked fine for centuries now, millennia in fact.

Mad. That has never worked and never will do either.

Bit late now.

The great capitalist machine was strangled along with private wealth and a free market 60 years ago.

I am sure people said that 'it would be the death knell of the farrier and the blacksmith' when cars first appeared.

And it was.

Just pointing out the EU wouldn't let us even if we wanted to. And of course the EU is a protected marketplace, its just that some countries are more protected than others.

Since your email has changed I will have to replonk you as well.

Of course. We are the only steel maker in the EU, so all the other countries gang up against us. You really haven't a clue.

Doesn't surprise me you think yourself so important all the world needs to know who you killfile. But perhaps you'd then refrain from commenting on posts from people you have kilfilled. As if...