British Steal

So it turns out that the UK business secretary, Sajid Javid, knew all along about the impact of China dumping steel in Europe at below cost. Chinese steel production is heavily state subsidised. But given an opportunity to provide some relief to the UK steel industry he declined saying:

“The responsibility of government is to look at the overall impact on British industry and jobs,” the Business Secretary said. 

“If duties get disproportionate it would have an impact in Britain and elsewhere on consumers of steel. Those businesses tell us it will cost jobs and exports if duties got out of control. 

“It’s important to be led by evidence and get the right balance of duty required to correct the harm being done to the domestic market. 

“To go further might in the short term look the right way to go to protect industry but you have to remember in Britain there are also companies that consume steel as part of the production process.” - Telegraph 10 Feb 2016

Blogger Craig Murray says

On Javid’s instruction, last year the British diplomatic mission to the EU (UKREP Brussels) was lobbying the EU commission against higher punitive tariffs on Chinese steel than the 13% the UK supported – even though the Commission found that dumped Chinese steel had an effective state subsidy of up to 72%. I have this from a British diplomatic source.

And adds:

There are no steel mills in Tory constituencies.

So this collapse of the British steel industry is part of a plan by Javid and the other Tories it seems. No one is quite sure how the plan will work. We want to export more to China, hence we keep them sweet by allowing them to torpedo our steel industry and put 40,000 people out of work and then we send them all the stuff we manufacture from Chinese steel? Only the Chinese seem to benefit from this. So is Javid in the pay of the Chinese government? Or is he a moron? Or a socio-path? Or what?