Posted on 04/22/2020 9:20:02 AM PDT by Lurch Addams
Exxon Mobil Corp kicked off construction on Wednesday of its $10 billion petrochemical complex in south Chinese city Huizhou, state news agency Xinhua reported.
The complex, which consists of a 1.6 million tonnes per year ethylene facility, is one of the few mega petrochemical projects in China wholly owned by a foreign investor.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
WTH?
” Not good.”
China is the main beneficiary of cheap oil, as the largest importer.
Exxon is not a friend to the USA. While it has domestic oil interest, most are abroad.
Wholly owned by a “foreign investor”?
Well now, I guess that would put to rest any worries about Xi suddenly deciding to nationalize this project at some later date.
Ah, money money money.
Is there anything better?
I won’t give a damned when China nationalizes that plant.I don’t want to hear a peep from them complaining about the theft of their property when they were stupid all along.
They should have built that plant elsewhere.Somewhere like here in the U.S. or at least in the western Hemisphere.
Just looked at a number of articles on this.
Not one of them named the supposed foreign investor...
Foreign, my derriere.
EXXON should receive absolutely zero taxpayer dollars. As a matter of fact we should require any American company that earns money in China be charged a surcharge on taxes and not allow costs in China to de deducted from earnings.
You got that right.
I've been thinking about the circumstances that American companies should be doing business in China. I'm still pretty much a believer in free trade with one major caveat. That is if the playing field is level. (It currently is not, but Trump has made strides to make it so.) American consumers have a responsibility too. Stop buying crap from China that you really don't need. American businesses need to protect their supply chains, i.e., move away from purchasing components made outside of US and buy from US based manufacturing companies.
As for doing business in China. I've got no problem with that if the product is sold in China and it is less expensive than making the product in America and shipping to it to China. This would go for any nation for that matter. However, the product engineering and design should be in America. I believe this is a good balance for corporate profitability and US labor markets.
Here’s the thing about China that probably only us engineers understand
The Chinese people greatly value education and this is even more true in China where there is dire straits if you don’t finish at the top of your class
It’s very highly competitive and no student at all slacks even in the slightest unlike here in the United States were pretty much almost all students slack and just want to screw around and have fun
So when you go to China with your factory you have a highly educated , and I mean mathematics , workforce
Couple that with the fact that to get a good job over there is like gold and people are going to show up and the culture means that you don’t complain you don’t file HR complaints
and all that you can see why companies have been going there for decades - despite the fact that you have communist overlords that can sides your plant at any time
And now of course we have the executive here , our great President Donald J Trump , who is not putting up with crap and he’s going to make the trade balance fair again
and so the advantages that China has with their slave labor class are going to be obviated to a large degree
What really pi$$e$ me off about this is that Exxon (and other bigs) will also be the only companies to protect America from the Chicoms buying up all the failing small fracking companies.
Been looking around. There may be a foreign investor. I’ve seen a couple of prospects, one Saudi, one American.
Now I really, really want to know the identity of that other investor...
Countries the world over will be pulling strategic industries out of China... then we'll see how much oil China needs.
Exxon's being played for a fool...
Not a fool.
A collaborator.
At some point I would expect all the little guys to be bought up to make the sector stay belly up. But, it looks like the government will come in. Rockefeller came in and did this decades ago, but government has replaced such capitalization.
It never ends. If it makes people feel a bit better, if not Exxon, then it would have been BP or Total or Shell (i.e., non-US companies)...that’s the type of world we now live in.
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