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Protectionism “The Chinese Communist Party made a deliberate decision in the late 1990s to build the biggest steel industry in the world, even though China lacks most of the things you need to make steel—namely raw materials and affordable energy,” said Jim Darsey, executive vice president of Nucor Corporation—the biggest steelmaker in the United States—in a submission to the U.S. Congress. In 2015, the U.S. steel industry lost twelve thousand jobs. That year, facing massive overcapacity problems at home, China exported 112 million tons of steel, more than what was produced by the United States, Canada, and Mexico combined, a feat made all the more amazing given that ten years earlier, China was still a net importer of steel. “These imports aren’t coming here because the United States is an uncompetitive place to make steel. The opposite is true. We have plentiful raw materials, low-priced energy; and we have the most productive steel workers in the world,” said Darsey. “But we cannot compete with foreign governments who are willing to pour unlimited resources into growing an industry that does not have to yield any rate of return.” According to researchers Usha Haley and George Haley in their 2013 book, Subsidies to Chinese Industry, between 2000 and 2007, subsidies to China’s steel producers rose 3,800%, with the bulk coming through subsidized thermal coal, coking coal, and electricity. In 2007, energy subsidies to the steel industry alone came to $15.7 billion, about as much as Nucor generated in total sales. Something similar happened with paper, another industry mired in overcapacity. In 2008, China took over from the United States as the biggest papermaker in the world, producing paper products that are significantly cheaper than those produced in either the United States or the European Union. Yet China has few forests, and water—another important ingredient in making paper—is relatively scarce. Labor makes up only 4% of the cost of making paper. “In all these capital-intensive industries where labor costs play minor roles . . . in the space of approximately five years, China rose from a net importer to among the largest producers and exporters in the world,” the Haleys write in their book, which tracks Chinese subsidies to steel, paper, glass, and auto parts. The problem is not simply that China is able to dominate those industries it deems important. It’s that the policies that deliver dominance also create a huge amount of waste. “When the government chooses to support certain industries by imposing development policies . . . those industries all end up in overcapacity,” said Fan Gang, one of China’s most prominent economists. “Once we enter into these sorts of policies, each level of government then gives out its own subsidies, everyone in the market hustles, and in a short period it turns into an overcapacity industry.”
China's Great Wall of Debt
Dinny McMahon
committed at an entirely new level. You see, a burst of sudden inspiration isn’t a goal or a strategy. Inspiration fades. Something major can happen in our lives and convince us that we really want to be X, Y, or Z, but if we don’t follow up on that intuitive hint with action, the feelings will evaporate and we’ll be right back where we were. Into action, then. I packed up my
Creative Calling
Chase Jarvis
As is the case when you are awake, the sensory gate of the thalamus once again swings open during REM sleep. But the nature of the gate is different. It is not sensations from the outside that are allowed to journey to the cortex during REM sleep. Rather, signals of emotions, motivations, and memories (past and present) are all played out on the big screens of our visual, auditory, and kinesthetic sensory cortices in the brain. Each and every night, REM sleep ushers you into a preposterous theater wherein you are treated to a bizarre, highly associative carnival of autobiographical themes. When it comes to information processing, think of the wake state principally as reception (experiencing and constantly learning the world around you), NREM sleep as reflection (storing and strengthening those raw ingredients of new facts and skills), and REM sleep as integration (interconnecting these raw ingredients with each other, with all past experiences, and, in doing so, building an ever more accurate model of how the world works, including innovative insights and problem-solving abilities).
Why We Sleep
Matthew Walker
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