Vote Lib Dem for a steel-free future

From BBC:

The [new] Woodhouse Colliery would extract coking coal from the seabed off St Bees, with a processing plant on the former Marchon site at Kells...

Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, who asked for the "call-in" described the news as "a kick in the teeth in the fight to tackle climate change".

He said: "Cumbria has so many renewable resources to provide energy - water, wind and solar - and we should most definitely not be taking the backwards step of opening a new coal mine."

Which raises the obvious question, can the world produce steel without using coking coal?

To which the answer appears to be "No".

UPDATE: Or possibly "Yes", if you believe the clever scientists.

Tata Steel

Should we be concerned about the welfare of the people made redundant at Tata Steel? Sure, absolutely. But I don't remember people talking about recalling parliament when Burberry closed its factory in Treorchy a few years ago at the loss of 300 jobs. And I'd much rather take my chances with redundancy in Port Talbot than Rhondda. No-one talked about intervention when Comet went out of business, destroying 7000 jobs, or the 27000 Woolworth employees being put on the scrap heap.

The important thing about the Tata Steel story is that it has many angles that mean that the media can run numerous stories about it. These include things like:-

• union involvement, so conflict between political parties
• romanticised nostalgia about heavy industry
• single place, so "damaged community"
• a vague sense among the public that producing steel is strategically important

Because of all those factors, it becomes a media narrative, in a way that a clothing factory or an electronics chain doesn't. The media see it as an investment to pursue it because of how much can be milked from it.

In reality, there is no difference between this and a clothing factory in the valleys closing. It's cheaper to make raincoats in Bangladesh or China, so production moves to China or Bangladesh.

What are the practical things we can do? Well, we generally disapprove of tariffs, so we shouldn't do that. I'd suggest two things: a) reducing taxes in poorer areas, and the efficient way to do that is to switch more tax to LVT and b) getting serious about retraining.

Iron ore: Another classic example of cartel behaviour

From mining.com:

The price of [iron ore] is trading at the lowest levels since early May 2009. So far in 2015 the price has fallen 12.5% following a year in which the commodity nearly halved in value [to $63/tonne]

... more than softening demand, increased supply has been blamed on the fall in the price. Global production of iron ore rose by an annual average of over 6% from 2010 to 2014 despite the fall in prices and is set to expand even further this year.

The growth in output came mainly from the big three producers – Vale, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton – which even at today's price enjoy fat margins thanks to cost of production of only around $25 a tonne.

Goldman Sachs released its estimates for iron ore on Friday. The investment bank cut its outlook for iron ore for this year to $66 a tonne this year, down substantially from an earlier estimate of $80: "Significant overinvestment to date will ensure that the market is well supplied, while demand from the Chinese steel sector is maturing. A painful war of attrition awaits."

So the Big Three are doing pretty much exactly the same as the Saudis with oil. Drive up prices and lull lots of would be competitors into investing in higher cost production, then boost output, watch prices halve and drive them all out of business again.