Brexit Penny Dropping?

[woolley]

1 hour ago, Freggyragh said:

Britain needs a steel industry — not just because the tories promised 'levelling up' for the regions that produce and an infrastructure & building boom, but also because it is crucial to defence.

Absolutely agree, but it's nothing to do with Brexit. As I posted above, it's been happening throughout our EU membership. Foreign ownership, feeble industrial policy and lack of investment.

[woolley]

4 minutes ago, The Voice of Reason said:

 

We’re all doomed, All doomed I tell you.

Especially like me if you’re not keen on turnips.

Life as we know it will come to a complete stop.

Like it was going to the day after a Leave vote in 2016. 8 years later the world hasn't ended, despite war and pestilence.

[woolley]

7 hours ago, manxman1980 said:

  I would also point out that importing everything does not stop emissions. It simply moves them elsewhere and potentially increases them.

That's exactly what I was driving at in a cryptic way. There's only one global atmosphere and emissions into it are still literally heading skywards. Look at the graph linked and tell me if you see this trajectory changing in a meaningful way any time soon. They seem to be employing the same number crunchers they use to tell us that government deficits will magically turn around into the black, but it's always 5 or 10 years down the track. Co2 emissions projections are dealt with in a similar way. All will be well - eventually.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissions/

The world population has increased eightfold in about 200 years. Sustaining those numbers, and building all the necessary infrastructure, has only been possible by burning an awful lot of fossil fuel as reflected in the graph. Peak oil has been imminent throughout my life. It's still imminent.

My present contention is that the energy needed cannot be produced by alternative means to the extent required. We shall see. The UK barely registers on the scale nowadays and the IOM spending millions to comply is farcical at this stage. A more honest assessment of global emissions by country would include imports from goods manufactured elsewhere. In any case, since we are apparently gearing up for WW3, I don't suppose it matters so much since war is not good on emissions or the environment.

[manxman1980]

3 hours ago, Freggyragh said:

Britain needs a steel industry — not just because the tories promised 'levelling up' for the regions that produce and an infrastructure & building boom, but also because it is crucial to defence and soon Britain will be the only G20 country without one.

Personal opinion... we should find a better solution than steel but realistically that isn't really on the horizon yet.

How much is steel still an essential part of defence?  I am guessing it's needed for tanks and ships.  Both of those are under threat constantly from air power and missiles.  

Wouldn't other materials potentially now be more important?

3 hours ago, Freggyragh said:

Trump got the ball rolling by slapping tariffs on imports. The EU responded by putting tariffs on imports according to the carbon costs of production — as a third country subject to tariffs Britain just cannot compete on the world market — well, not without new green tech, but they've negotiated themselves out of the two biggest markets that might have offered a safety-net during transition. So brexiters are happy just to write off the British steel industry as a loss that was just bound to happen, nothing to do with having the worst trading position in the world this side of Serbia. Right. 

The UK steel industry was failing long before Trump.  The business I used to work for did contracts for TATA steel and other steel manufacturers. 

Well before Brexit these businesses were in dire financial straits and needed massive investment. 

As much as I may want to blame Brexit it is not solely responsible for this situation. 

[woolley]

11 minutes ago, manxman1980 said:

Personal opinion... we should find a better solution than steel but realistically that isn't really on the horizon yet.

How much is steel still an essential part of defence?  I am guessing it's needed for tanks and ships.  Both of those are under threat constantly from air power and missiles.  

Wouldn't other materials potentially now be more important?

The UK steel industry was failing long before Trump.  The business I used to work for did contracts for TATA steel and other steel manufacturers. 

Well before Brexit these businesses were in dire financial straits and needed massive investment. 

As much as I may want to blame Brexit it is not solely responsible for this situation. 

Only very marginally, in fact. It's a red herring.

[Freggyragh]

Some data:

UK steel production per year:

1970 (peak) 28M tonnes

1974 23M tonnes

1979 22M tonnes

Thatcher elected 

1984 15M tonnes

1988 — British Steel privatised

1989 15M tonnes

1992 — Maastricht Treaty

1994 17M tonnes

GATT Uruguay round - hugely reduced tariffs on imported steel from third countries

1999 16M tonnes — British Steel merger with Koninklijke Hoogovens to form Corus.

2004 14M tonnes

2007 — Corus sold to Tata Steel

2008 — banking crisis

2009 10M tonnes

2014 12M tonnes

2016 brexit vote, Longbridge MG factory closes — 7M tonnes

2017 brexit chaos — 7M tonnes

2018 — Trump tariff (25% on steel), brexit chaos — 7M tonnes

2019 brexit chaos — 7M tonnes 

2020 brexit chaos, covid — 7M tonnes

December 2020 brexit withdrawal 'deal'

2021 covid chaos — 7M tonnes

Honda Swindon closes

2022 — 6M tonnes, Trump tariff lifted

2023 — production figures unavailable.

September 2023 — Initially as a response to the Trump tariff, and conscious that 10% of carbon emissions globally are due to steel production, the EU began moving to a carbon based tariff system (the carbon border adjustment mechanism) that will progressively protect EU steel producers from imports from third countries like China that burn carbon fuels to produce steel, as EU countries move to electric arc (EAF) production (but are protected from having to do so immediately).

As a third country with only 19% of its steel produced by EAF the UK is fucked, as 37% of its export steel trade is with the EU. 

British Steel and Tata Steel begged the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero to align energy costs in the UK with the EU and make an emergency trade agreement with the EU to allow them to ease into the transition to EAF. Brexit headbangers could not bring themselves to 'align' themselves with the EU in any way, or negotiate a new trade deal for steel. Instead, Sunak gave a £500M grant to Tata Steel and offered £300M to the Chinese owned British Steel to transition to EAF.

January 2023 — Although we still live in a world where everything is either made of steel or made by steel, and steel production is therefore strategically vital to both the economy and security of the UK, we have a situation where: 

— The UK's steel plants are owned by companies based in BRICS countries.

— The British taxpayer is funding the l transition to EAF.

— To ensure exports to the EU can recover,  the EAF transition will happen all in one go (if it actually happens at all) and in the meantime 10s of thousands of jobs will go. 

But of course, this has nothing at all to do with brexit. 

 

 

 

 

[manxman1980]

7 hours ago, Freggyragh said:

But of course, this has nothing at all to do with brexit. 

It pains me to say it bit no, it isn't all linked with Brexit.

As the data you posted shows UK Steel Making had been in decline long before Brexit.

You also missed out of the data;

2015 decline in global steel prices.  SSI UK goes into liquidation closing part of the Teeside steelworks.  (This impacts many suppliers who were owed money by SSI UK).

2016 Tata Steel sells some sites to Greybull Capital leading to the resurrection of British Steel.

2019 British Steel taken over by the insolvency service.

Teeside has now been completely shut and demolished.

The other factor in this which you have overlooked is that the UK has very little heavy industry left and a significantly reduced demand for steel as a result.

As I mentioned earlier all the raw materials come from overseas increasing production costs compared to other countries.

As I said, UK Steel has been in trouble for years.  Port Talbot has been under threat of closure for years.  The business I worked for actually quoted to reline the blast furnaces there for Tata Steel but they constantly delayed decisions.

We had people who hated working on Tata Steel sites because "you weld rust to rust".  

There used to be frequent derailments of the locomotives used on site due to poor maintenance of track.

Plenty of the oil storage tanks around the sites had broken gauges and sometimes leaks which were never fixed.

If you ever set foot onto one of these sites you could easily see the lack of investment ot modernisation.  All pre Brexit.

 

Would being in the EU have saved UK Steel?  No, it may have resulted in a few more years but no one was addressing the problems.

 

[woolley]

The timeline posted by Freggy underlines precisely where this is headed and, again, it's not the fault of the EU. It's UK policy failure over half a century which just happens to coincide with our membership of the bloc. Any EU regulations now though are not going to affect the final destination. The die is cast, so to speak.

[Freggyragh]

[Freggyragh]

 

[woolley]

Yet again, it isn't due to either.

[manxman1980]

@Freggyragh I think the telling part of that is the reference to a lack of uncertainty post brexit due to all the voices in the Conservative Party. 

We know that the uncertainty has throttled investment in the UK.

I still think that Brexit has only hastened the demise of Port Talbot.  The steel industry was in trouble long before.

[manxman1980]

British Steels figures aren't looking good either.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/21/questions-raised-over-british-steels-finances

[Freggyragh]

Britain does need a steel industry. It doesn't need one of world's largest like it did when it led the world in making cars, ships, trains and bikes, but it does need it. The main reason it can't have what it needs is brexit. 

 

[Freggyragh]

I'm appalled by this attitude that thousands of people losing their livelihoods and Britain losing its steel industry was somehow inevitable. It was not. Choosing to be treated as a third country and therefore subject to EU carbon taxes was A CHOICE. I know people based their choices on a range of dumb notions and feelings from xenophobia, trusting Boris Johnson in the NHS, nostalgia for tungsten lightbulbs, navy blue passports or bendy bananas, or whatever, but even the redest-faced flag-shagger now knows it was a vote to be much poorer country, to lose influence and become a rule taker, not a rule maker. The only benefits were for the charlatans that sold the idea, and, of course, Vladimir Putin.