Germany is the second-largest foreign investor in Ukraine behind Cyprus, which is a transit point for Russian money.
About three-quarters of the gas and oil that Germany imported in 2013 came from Russia. The country also acts as a major gas transit hub for countries like France.
“Germany in particular is dependent on Russian gas,”
American trade policy
How to make the world $600 billion poorer
Reasonable estimates say that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) could boost the world’s annual output by $600 billion—equivalent to adding another Saudi Arabia. Some $200 billion of that would accrue to America.
And the actual gains could be even larger. The agreements would clear the way for freer trade in services, which account for most of rich countries’ GDP but only a small share of trade. Opening up trade in services could help reduce the cost of everything from shipping to banking, education and health care. Exposing professional occupations to the same global competition that factory workers have faced for decades could even strike a blow against the income inequality that Mr Obama so often decries
Why should Japanese politicians risk infuriating their farmers when any agreement can be torn up on Capitol Hill?
Europe’s leaders will now doubt America’s commitment, given how feebly Mr Obama has fought for fast-track. Trade sceptics, such as French farmers, are drooling. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, who is already furious about American spying, may decide that a trade deal is not worth battling for.
He seldom mentions, for example, that cheap imports help the poor by cutting their shopping bills, and so reduce inequality of consumption.
chief executive of Severstal North America, the United States subsidiary of Russia’s Severstal Group, which now owns the Rouge steel operations.
At Severstal’s Dearborn factory, for example, carmakers including Ford and others account for 70 percent of sales,
The shift to aluminum is gaining momentum. Automakers are under increasing pressure to meet strict new fuel-economy standards by 2025
United States Steel has invested $400 million in a joint venture with Kobe Steel of Japan to make advanced high-strength steel in a Leipsic, Ohio, factory expected to produce 500,000 tons annually.
Inside Severstal’s steel mill on a cold January day, hissing heavy machinery removed oxides from steel sheets, reducing their thickness to the equivalent of five human hairs.
These are headed for Mexico, to Navistar’s stamping plant there.Continue reading the main story
Steel makers argue that they still have advantages in price — aluminum can cost as much as three times more — and flexibility, both for the manufacturer and the mechanic who will be fixing the car.“When you build a mass-produced vehicle, you really need to think about the consequences of the supply chain and repair and insurance costs,” Mr. Dey said.
new federal fuel-efficiency standards that will require a fleetwide average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, a significant boost from the roughly 25 m.p.g. that vehicles average today.
“Sometimes there is a push from the aluminum side, and they win over with a particular model, and steel tends to be the comeback kid, with more innovation,” said Felix Schuler, a Munich-based partner in the Boston Consulting Group’s metals and mining practice.
What seems certain is that ordinary steel is likelier to lose out to its new and improved cousin than to aluminum, Mr. Schuler said.
Novelis is investing nearly $550 million to upgrade plants in Oswego, N.Y., and Nachterstedt, Germany, and to build a new factory in Changzhou, China, to triple its capacity from a year ago to 900,000 tons annually.
Alcoa, the country’s biggest aluminum producer, is investing about $670 million in its Iowa, Tennessee and Saudi Arabia facilities.Continue reading the main story
“Henry Ford was a control freak, and he wanted to control as much of the manufacturing as possible,” Mr. Casey said. “He made the steel, he made the glass, he made the tires.”
In the 43 years leading up to 1914, GDP had grown at an annual rate of 6%, the fastest recorded in the world.
The country ranked among the ten richest in the world, after the likes of Australia, Britain and the United States, but ahead of France, Germany and Italy.
Its income per head was 92% of the average of 16 rich economies
Its income per head is now 43% of those same 16 rich economies; it trails Chile and Uruguay in its own back yard.
The election of 1989 marked the first time in more than 60 years that a civilian president had handed power to an elected successor.
the repeated recessions of the 1970s and 1980s, the hyperinflation of 1989-90, the economic crisis of 2001 and now the possibility of another crisis to come.
But three deep-lying explanations help to illuminate the country’s diminishment. Firstly, Argentina may have been rich 100 years ago but it was not modern. That made adjustment hard when external shocks hit. The second theory stresses the role of trade policy. Third, when it needed to change, Argentina lacked the institutions to create successful policies.
Railways transformed the economics of agriculture and refrigerated shipping made it possible to export meat on an unprecedented scale: between 1900 and 1916 Argentine exports of frozen beef rose from 26,000 tonnes to 411,000 tonnes a year. But Argentina mainly consumed technology from abroad rather than inventing its own.
External shocks duly materialised, which leads to the second theory for Argentine decline: trade policy.
Argentina raised import tariffs from an average of 16.7% in 1930 to 28.7% in 1933. Reliance on Britain, another country in decline, backfired as Argentina’s favoured export market signed preferential deals with Commonwealth countries.
an existing policy of import substitution deepened; the share of trade as a percentage of GDP continued to fall.
High food prices meant big profits for farmers but empty stomachs for ordinary Argentines. Open borders increased farmers’ takings but sharpened competition from abroad for domestic industry.
“One-third of the country—the commodities industry, engineers and regional industries like wine and tourism—is ready to compete,” says Sergio Berensztein, a political analyst. “Two-thirds are not.”
Property rights are insecure
Statistics cannot be trusted: Argentina was due this week to unveil new inflation data in a bid to avoid censure from the IMF for its wildly undercooked previous estimates.
hort-termism is embedded in the system
“We have spent 50 years thinking about maintaining government spending, not about investing to grow,” says Fernando de la Rúa, a former president who resigned during the 2001 crisis.
The country’s Vaca Muerta (“Dead Cow”) shale-oil and gasfield is estimated to be the world’s third-largest. If Argentina can attract foreign capital, the money could start flowing within a decade.