[sarcasm]

Export profile of a third-world nation?

[endthematrix]

"Americans should be a little more appreciative of the benefits of China's scrap purchases."

They take our scrap and give us crap!

[endthematrix]

China got the best of this mess...and we get this in return?

[Gordian Blade]

There was another time the scrap metal industry was booming: Sales to Japan in the 1920's and 30's.

[riverrunner]

I know several junk car salvage yards owners a couple a years ago they could not get rid of their cars. I just talked to one the other day and he is buying anything he can get his hands on and crushing it.

This is good hundreds of cars that were just laying around rusting away now are being used.

[A. Pole]

"What is happening now is not unique," said Robin Wiener, president of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, the dealers' trade group. Attempts to restrict scrap exports, she said, are "just clearly a smoke screen attempt to control the price of scrap" and would be a "distortion of free trade."

Free trade shall not be denied! Anyway these metals will return in the form of finished products.

[genefromjersey]

Jeez ! I'm old enough to remember the fuss raised when it was "discovered" the scrap metal we had been shipping to Japan in huge quantities was coming back to haunt us-in the form of weapons,ships,airplanes,etc.

Even a dumb dog,sprayed once by a skunk,will detour around the next one it meets.

[endthematrix]

Steel price increases a looming problem

April 2, 2004

Why is it that a potentially big story that could have a devastating effect on the economy is being mostly overlooked by both political parties -- and the media? Since early January, steel prices have been escalating to record levels.

We are a small family metal-fabricating business, with approximately 25 employees, that buys a fair amount of steel. We are now seeing prices at double in some cases, and we are seeing shortages. Widespread unemployment is just around the corner when present supplies of some steel items are exhausted. I see it happening right now!

This is not something that is going to miraculously disappear overnight. The Evansville area will most certainly be adversely affected.

It appears that China is buying most of the United States' scrap for its own steel needs, and we now have a real shortage that may become a crisis. This is just a part of the overall picture that you would find with a little bit of research.

With limited capacity and plant closures and coke shortages, compounded with other economic conditions, the steel industry is on its way to causing double-digit inflation. Everything made out of metal will have to go up in price.

It's simple. Maybe too simple. China will be dropping even more cheap products over here, and a lot of companies like ours and larger will no longer be.

Keith Smith,
Creative Craftsmen Inc.,
Evansville, Ind.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/letters/cst-edt-vox02a.html

[Fledermaus]

I bet Kerry, the Democrats and all the whiney idiots around here at FR start complaining about us "outsourcing" our metals.

[Thumper1960]

Red China needs scrap?

Okayyyyyyy

Send them one half our nuke arsenal, via air.