Regarding replacement of parts of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, above says "Construction of the bridge decks and the materials that went into them are a Made in China affair. California officials say the state saved hundreds of millions of dollars by turning to China."
"Zhenhua put 3,000 employees to work on the project: steel-cutters, welders, polishers and engineers. The company built the main bridge tower, which was shipped in mid-2009, and a total of 28 bridge decks ? the massive triangular steel structures that will serve as the roadway platform."
Seems hard to believe, since China's total steel production is almost an order of magnitude higher (630 million tons vs. 81 million tons) than total US production.
"A joint venture between two American companies, American Bridge and Fluor Enterprises, won the prime contract for the project in early 2006. Their bid specified getting much of the fabricated steel from overseas, to save money."
"California decided not to apply for federal funding for the project because the "Buy America" provisos would probably have required purchasing more expensive steel and fabrication from United States manufacturers. "
You stupid f*ck.
--Obama had barely begun his first term as a US senator at that time.
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"Government-backed subsidies have allowed China's steel production to increase by more than 170% between 2000 and 2005 and another 20% in 2006, while exports of Chinese steel to the U.S. more than doubled in 2006."
"The report also was critical of the Chinese government's controlling stake in its steel industry. The government owns 100% of eight of its 10 largest steel manufacturers and owns a majority of the 19 top steel producers."
?? Statistics say that China is importing ENORMOUS amounts of iron ore. 850 million tons a year or something like that- about half the entire world's production. It's making Australia, Brazil, India, and some multinational resource companies (eg. Rio Tinto, Cliffs) $billions. It's juicing the economies of a lot of places. Modest amounts are probably trickling down rather indirectly to yours truly, in fact. The Chinese can only produce around half of the iron ore they are using, and they're at record levels of domestic production.
Iron ore is selling internationally for about 15 times what it sold for in 2000, albeit measured in shrinking US dollars, so maybe 10 times in real value, if you believe the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation values. That's a bigger increase than oil ($91/barrel YTD average vs. $27/barrel average in 2000- about 3.3:1 or about 2:1 after claimed inflation).
US scrap exports to China amount to less than 1% of China's steel production, (6 million tons a year vs. 650 million tons a year, roughly, about 1/4 of total US scrap exports) so it ain't very significant, and can't be at current levels of production. It's probably significant to US mini-mills since their cost of scrap has gone up with their suppliers finding other customers willing to pay.. and I'm sure both sides are grumbling- the scrap guys say China isn't buying enough because of unspecified "trade restrictions", and I guess the mini mills would like to see exports shut down completely. ;-)
RG is another one that's not here for metalworking interests, just to spew his mental sewage, like Gummer and a few others who don't care if the points expressed are accurate.. or may even actually know that they're not, but doesn't matter to them.
They're misguided thoughts are not based in reality, and attempting to expose them to any point of view other than their own, is a huge waste of effort.
I appreciate that you went to the effort to at least inform anyone else that would've otherwise been gullible enough to accept RG's bullshit.
Try to focus, stay on topic and keep your ADHD / OCD problem in check.
It makes you looks quite stupid and nobody really cares about your communication failures.
mike
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RG is another one that's not here for metalworking interests, just to spew his mental sewage, like Gummer and a few others who don't care if the points expressed are accurate.. or may even actually know that they're not, but doesn't matter to them.
They're misguided thoughts are not based in reality, and attempting to expose them to any point of view other than their own, is a huge waste of effort.
I appreciate that you went to the effort to at least inform anyone else that would've otherwise been gullible enough to accept RG's bullshit.
Their commodity grades, particularly the performance-defined (rather than alloy-defined) structural grades, are similar crap to the crap we produce. Their stainless steel is quite good. Their tool steel is not good, and it's always in short supply.
They must be making pretty good forming grades of steel now because they're making cars with unibodies. The Japanese weren't able to do that themselves until around 1966, with their first export model being the 1968 Datsun (Nissan) 510. You can't form unibodies with crap steel.
Not true. They have a big primary steel capacity, making their basic steel from iron ore -- much of the ore being imported from Australia. Like the US and every other steel producing country, they also use scrap.
Most structural steel today is made largely from scrap, via electric-arc remelt furnaces, and it doesn't matter where it comes from. All that matters is that the finished product has the proper tensile strength, elongation, and, in some cases, weldability. Structural steel could be made in East Timor or Botswana. As long as it passes the tests, it could be made anywhere and it's about the same thing.
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