Easter … waste … deindustrialisation … Scunthorpe … Trump tariffs, April 2025
Easter … waste … deindustrialisation … Scunthorpe … Trump tariffs, April 2025
1 Positive value
Easter
The capacity for love
Power and benevolence of benevolence institutions
2 Environment: Waste Wars
3 The world economy
The industrial revolution in the west … deindustrialisation in the west … the east
Scunthorpe steelworks
4 Trump: self, power, initiator
Initiators of conflict?: Putin, Hamas, Trump
Trump’s tariffs
Trump’s tariffs, 2018-2019
Trump tariffs, February 2025
Trump tariff headlines, March-April 2025
Tariffs and the power of the rich to avoid taxation
It is Easter weekend, Trump’s tariff pronouncements have created turmoil for the world economy and in the UK the government has taken control of Chinese-owned British Steel. A key issue is deindustrialisation. All the while, plastic waste is being produced.
1 Positive value
Positive value seldom makes front page news and indeed is also rather scarce in the rest of the newspaper. However there is a regular column in Saturday’s Times which often does take positive value as the starting point, namely ‘Credo’.
Easter
Stephen Cottrell’s Easter message is about the hope in the darkness that light will come. The Times, April 19, 2025: 82.
The capacity for love
The other Saturday Ian Bradley discussed The Sound of Music, “one of the most explicitly Christian of all musicals”. He notes the question, “how does God wish me to use my capacity for love?”. In abstract this question can be posed in other religions and indeed outside religion:
“How should I use my capacity for love?”
“Sound of Music still calls us to climb every mountain.” Ian Bradley. The Times, April 5, 2025: 82.
Music of the Night. Religious Influences and Spiritual Resonances in Operetta and Musical Theatre. Ian Bradley. Oxford University Press. May 2025. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/music-of-the-night-9780197699744?cc=es&lang=en&#
Power and benevolence of benevolence institutions
Avowedly benevolent institutions have a degree of power but may to some extent deviate from benevolence.
“Missionary group accused of spiritual abuse.” The Observer, 6 April 2025: 1, 2, 21-23.
2 Environment: Waste Wars
Should this environment section come before the positive value section? After all, if we destroy the environment maybe positive value will be neither here nor there. Or maybe positive value will be even more important as environmental problems become even more pressing.
For some in the world environmental problems are already pressing. All the time I am enjoying meals from plastic containers:
“Recycling: is exporting it all a load of rubbish? When we separate our waste, we imagine we’re doing our bit for the planet. But much of the West’s recycling ends up burnt overseas, with disastrous results. … Everything imaginable goes south. Gargantuan global plastic glut. … In the 1980s, it was mostly obscure forms of industrial residue that got shifted south. By the 2000s it was almost everything imaginable.” Alexander Clapp. The Times, April 5 2025: 32-33.
Waste Wars. Alexander Clapp. John Murray. 2025.
book: https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/alexander-clapp/waste-wars/9781399803151/.
3 The world economy
This section introduces the general notion of deindustrialisation in the west and then looks at the particular case of Scunthorpe steelworks. To what extent does debate about Scunthorpe exhibit a similar economic nationalism to that expressed by Trump in his justification of tariffs?
The industrial revolution in the west … deindustrialisation in the west … the east
The industrial revolution transformed the world economy, Britain leading the way in the eighteenth century, spreading to the rest of Europe and America and then to the rest of the world, particularly the east. As the east rose, it took an increasing share of manufacturing leading to deindustrialisation in the west. The following are a few snippets about the situation in Britain … and China.
Scotland
“We cam na here to view your warks
In hopes to be mair wise,
But only, lest we gang to Hell,
It may be nae surprise.”
An early stage of the industrial revolution. Robert Burns on a visit in 1787 to Carron Ironworks founded in 1759.
https://falkirklocalhistory.club/people/robert-burns/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carron_Company
Scotland 2025: deindustrialised with no coal, no iron ore, no iron, no steel, no cars … no aluminium.
In 2014 the deindustrialised areas with greater unemployment were more likely to vote for Scottish independence and in general in recent times the Scottish national party has been a dominant force in Scotland displacing Labour in industrial heartlands.
Wales
Major steelmaking is now confined to Port Talbot and the blast furnaces there were closed six months ago.
Northern Ireland
The Titanic was launched in 1911. Part of the dockyards are now a heritage site. Harland & Wolff still exist but actual shipbuilding is limited.
https://www.titanicbelfast.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harland_%26_Wolff
England
Coal and steel have been in continual decline for decades but it was the Thatcher government of the 1980s which brought the most bitter conflict with the unions and the sharpest decline. The communities have not recovered and are part of Labour’s red wall, susceptible to Boris Johnson and Brexit and now Nigel Farage’s Reform party. In 2016, Tata kept Port Talbot, and sold off Scunthorpe and Rotherham electric arc furnaces* separately. Major steelmaking is now confined to Scunthorpe – see next section.
“Anne Harper. Activist wife of Arthur Scargill who brought ‘girl power’ to the miners’ strike in 1984-85 and later occupied pits threatened with closure.” Obituary The Times. 16 April 2025: 47.
.* [On a personal note I think it may have been the planning for these furnaces that were the subject of a computer simulation when I was a summer student at United Steel in 1966.]
China
Chinese steelmaking is “now half of world production”.
“British Steel must now join the modern economy, not be a prisoner of the old. Lack of investment and vision has dogged UK industry while China has literally forged ahead.” Will Hutton. The Observer. 20 April 2025: 46.
Scunthorpe steelworks
Sixty years ago, in 1966, I visited Scunthorpe steelworks. Back then, the plant had four blast furnaces. Today it has only two of these blast furnaces – they are the last two blast furnaces in Britain. The plant makes a hefty loss. The owners had been considering shutting down one or both of these last two blast furnaces. To prevent this happening the government took over the control of the plant. Jingye says the plant had annualised losses of £250 million, total losses of £1 billion since it took over five years ago, and a lost sunk investment of £1.2 billion. There have been many articles in the past week:
“British Steel crisis puts security on the line, says PM.” The Times. 12 April 2025: 12.
“Cold reality bites for Labour as steel industry stares into abyss. With renationalisation imminent, what went wrong and could we do without a domestic supplier?” The Times. 12 April 2025: 51.
“Call to stop China from ‘sabotaging’ UK industry. British Steel must be line in the sand, MPs told.” The Times, 14 April 2025.
“Race to save furnaces at stricken steelworks.” The Times. 14 April 2025: 12.
“Securing the future of British steelmaking.” Letters. The Times. 14 April 2025: 26.
“Stealing time. To rescue manufacturing Labour must cut the UK’s crippling industrial energy costs.” The Times. 14 April 2025: 27.
“Steel rescue ‘may not be a one-off’. Manufacturers warn of threat from energy prices” The Times. 14 April 2025: 33.
“Miliband signed up to close ties with China on energy. Pledge to work together on power grid. Ministers questioning relations after steel furore” The Times, 15 April 2025.
“Trump’s policy on China is a strategic blunder. Us will pay a high price in both wealth and influence after underestimating Beijing’s resolve not to be pushed around. America looks weaker to its rials and less reliable to its friends. Losing crucial imports is more immediately damaging to the US.” The Times. 15 April 2025: 23.
“Massive Chinese stake in Britain’s critical interests. From Shanghai to Scunthorpe, the government’s moves to seize back control of British Steel from Jingye exposes just how much the UK relies on Chinese investment.” The Times. 15 April 2025: 6-7.
“Longer spoon. The British Steel affair has exposed the government’s confused positions on relations with China and net zero. These interlocking issues hold lessons for ministers” The Times. 15 April 2025: 27.
“Steel caper’s final act needs a rewrite.” The Times. 15 April 2025: 35.
“Farage woos red wall with vow to reindustrialise UK. … Reform leader is a ‘pound-shop Trump’.” The Times. 16 April 2025: 6.
“ ‘Green hydrogen’ furnaces tipped as the future of steel.” The Times. 16 April 2025: 7.
“Saving British Steel won’t win votes or wars. Bailing out lame duck industries rarely solves the problem, and the arguments this time round just don’t hold water.” The Times. 16 April 2025: 23.
“Rolls Royce rescue by heath offers lessons for British Steel’s plight.” Ian King. The Times. 17 April 2025: 35.
“ ‘Buy British’ mantra of politicians legitimises Trump’s tariff folly.” Ryan Bourne. The Times. 17 April 2025: 35.
“North Sea is battleground for Labour v Reform. After the rescue of British Steel, influential Labour figures are now pressing for an urgent rethink on oil and gas drilling.” The Times. 18 April 2025: 21.
“On the road with a reformed Farage. Clacton MP is echoing Tony Benn and praising Arthur Scargill as he targets red wall voters.” The Times. 19 April 2025: 8.
“Ministers’ Scunthorpe panic show the folly of making policy in haste.” The Times. 19 April 2025: 51.
“British Steel must now join the modern economy, not be a prisoner of the old. Lack of investment and vision has dogged UK industry while China has literally forged ahead.” The Observer. 20 April 2025: 46.
4 Trump: self, power, initiator
Donald Trump’s approach to relationships is to regard the self as positive and the other as negative. In his role as president of the USA he is able to exercise great power and in his ready use of executive orders he is able to be the initiator of processes. He is negative to certain others within the USA and certain others internationally, both those nominally enemies of the USA and those nominally friends. His interventions in the Ukraine-Russia war and the Israel-Palestine war have sometimes been idiosyncratic. Most recently he has initiated a trade war with tariffs against all other countries.
Initiators of conflict?: Putin, Hamas, Trump
There are different parts of the global negative system. Negative action makes the world worse. Putin invaded Ukraine and made Europe worse. Hamas attacked Israel and made the Middle East worse. Trump decreed tariffs and made the world worse. In each case negative action prompted negative reaction – reciprocation. In each case – and on both sides – guided by the view, ‘self positive, other negative’. In each case the initiator saw themselves as the aggrieved party.
Trump’s tariffs
Trump had already introduced tariffs during his first term of office and a Federal Reserve report “find[s] that the 2018 tariffs are associated with relative reductions in manufacturing employment and relative increases in producer prices”. Back at the start of his second term, President Trump set tariffs of 25% on neighbours Mexico and Canada and 10% on China. Then in April he declared tariffs on all countries. This caused turmoil in the markets forcing him to delay the tariffs for 90 days, and setting the level at 10% for all countries except for China on which he imposed an 125% tariff.
There are a number of motivations for tariffs. One is to reverse deindustrialisation and enhance the manufacturing base of the USA. Another is to provide an alternative tax base to income tax, relieving the burden on the better-off citizens in the USA.
Trump’s first-term trade war
Flaaen, Aaron, and Justin Pierce (2019).
“Disentangling the Effects of the 2018-2019 Tariffs on a Globally Connected U.S. Manufacturing Sector,”
Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2019-086. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, https://doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2019.086.
[same paper: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2019086pap.pdf]
“This paper examines the effect of the tariff increases imposed by the United States and its trading partners in 2018 on outcomes in the U.S. manufacturing sector. We calculate measures of each industry’s exposure to tariff changes via three channels: the import protection that comes when an industry’s output is subject to U.S. tariffs, the increase in production costs resulting from tariffs on imported inputs, and the reduction in foreign competitiveness due to retaliatory tariffs in U.S. export markets. We then estimate the relationship between these measures of exposure to tariffs and manufacturing employment, output, and producer prices
We find that the 2018 tariffs are associated with relative reductions in manufacturing employment and relative increases in producer prices. For manufacturing employment, a small boost from the import protection effect of tariffs is more than offset by larger drags from the effects of rising input costs and retaliatory tariffs. For producer prices, the effect of tariffs is mediated solely through rising input costs. 20
These results have implications for evaluating the effects of recent U.S. trade policy. While one may view the negative welfare effects of tariffs found by other researchers to be an acceptable cost for a more robust manufacturing sector, our results suggest that the tariffs have not boosted manufacturing employment or output, even as they increased producer prices. While the longer-term effects of the tariffs may differ from those that we estimate here, the results indicate that the tariffs, thus far, have not led to increased activity in the U.S. manufacturing sector.
In addition, our results suggest that the traditional use of trade policy as a tool for the protection and promotion of domestic manufacturing is complicated by the presence of globally interconnected supply chains. While the potential for both tit-for-tat retaliation on import protection and input-output effects on the domestic economy have long been recognized by trade economists, empirical evidence documenting these channels in the context of an advanced economy has been limited. We find the impact from the traditional import protection channel is completely offset in the short-run by reduced competitiveness from retaliation and higher costs in downstream industries.”
Trump tariffs, February 2025
Previous: “USA power: self and other; positive and negative”
See Section 3 (one page) in
USA power: self and other; positive and negative
3 USA trade, now and in the Gilded Age: self v other
USA tariffs, 1841 and 1870 … Andrew Carnegie … (and me)
Generalising the Richardson model: trade war … reciprocation, interaction
Tariffs and the power of the rich to avoid taxation
“London drops down wealth list as super-rich move out. Capital has lost more millionaires than anywhere outside of Moscow.”
“Laugh at the super-rich but keep them here. High rollers are leaving Britain in droves, but their cash is vital to businesses, good causes and especially the Treasury.”
The Times, 9 April 2025: 1, 2, 25.
“Trump has talked of a 19th century ideal of funding the US Treasury more from tariffs and less from personal taxation.”
“Our goals aren’t bananas, explains US trade chief.” The Times, 9 April 2025: 7.
Musk is gaining and losing money in the current times:
“Huge contracts are being awarded to Musk companies.”
“Trump exposes gaps in checks and balances. The US constitution was designed for reasonable people but is being tested … disillusioned democrats must speak up. … Fear and hatred are the tyre levers in Trump’s toolkit.”
The Times, 9 April 2025: 23.
“ ‘Liberation day’ proves costly for billionaires.”
The Times, 9 April 2025: 6-7.
Trump tariff headlines, March-April 2025
Trump’s tariffs hit the front page a few days ahead of his announcement on Tuesday 2 April, although it was already being covered in the inside pages.
[Saturday 22 … Sunday 23 … Monday 24]
[Tuesday 25: “Trump team texts bombing plans to journalist by mistake.”]
[Wednesday 26: “US placates Putin over Black Sea ceasefire. Whitehall signals easing of sanctions in deal.”]
[Thursday 27: “Reeves squeezed by Trump. White House tariffs will hurt budget, warns watchdog. Chancellor’s spring statement raises tax burden to record level.”]
[Friday 28: “Trump makes $100bn grab for Ukraine’s oil and mineral wealth.”]
[Saturday 29 … Monday 31 March]
[“Tariff wars show how ‘King Donald’ is amassing power.” The Times, 29 March 2025: 36-37.]
“Trump’s tariffs will hit Britain, admits PM. UK negotiators denied deal in ‘challenging’ talks.” The Times, 1 April 2025.
“Firms told to brace for impact of trade tariffs. Britain will not retaliate as prime minister pins hopes on US deal.” The Times, 2 April 2025.
Tuesday April 2:
Trump announces tariffs
“Trump piles on the tariffs. British imports hit with ‘baseline’ 10 per cent levy. EU faces 20 per cent. New charges start to apply from Saturday.” The Times, 3 April 2025.
“Trillions lost as Trump tariffs hit global stocks. The ‘patient’ lived and is healing’. Business chiefs urge caution from Starmer.” The Times, 4 April 2025.
“World reels from Trump trade shock. US markets hammered after tariff blow send Europe and Asia tumbling. Stellantis plans furloughs as highest levies in century fuel recession fears. Beijing promises retaliation while US allies greet onslaught with dismay. … A ‘beautiful’ war on America’s pillagers.” The Financial Times, 4 April 2025.
“China joins trade war with Tariffs for Trump. FTSE 100 suffers worst day since Covid pandemic.” The Times, 5 April 2025.
“Starmer orders economic reset amid Trump tariff mayhem. PM ready to ditch the ‘old assumptions’. Debate on ‘iron clad’ fiscal rules now in play.” The Observer, 6 April 2025.
“Green rules relaxed to protect UK car industry. Tariffs mean world has changed, says Starmer.” The Times, 7 April 2025.
“No pause in tariffs, vows Trump as stocks sink. China threatened with further charge of 50%.” The Times, 8 April 2025.
“Trump ramps up trade war with Beijing.” The Times, 9 April 2025.
“Trump puts the brakes on tariffs for 90 days. Dramatic U-turn as China is hit with 125% rate.” The Times, 10 April 2025.
“US deal will not lessen 10% tariffs, Britain told. Focus now on protecting cars from higher levy.” The Times, 11 April 2025.
[12]
“Reeves calls for global free trade fightback to protect UK economy. New measures to help tariff-hit firms. Ambitious plan to foster closer ties to EU.” The Observer, 13 April 2025.
“Officials scramble to save pharma from tariffs. Bosses warn of Trump’s threat to key sector.”
“Chinese firm ‘will not bid’ to run Essex nuclear plant.” The Times, 16 April 2025.
[17]
“Blow to UK trade hopes as Trump says substantial tariffs will stay.” The Times, 18 April 2025.
THE END