Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Status Report From Another Would Be “Climate Leader,” The UK

By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | January 15, 2024

At any given moment in the course of human events, not everyone can be the leader. And thus can the world only have a small number of “climate leaders” to light us the way to the Great Green Energy Nirvana of the future.

Among that select group of “climate leaders,” New York is definitely one. We know that because New York enacted its Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act in 2018, announcing its “climate leadership” to the world for all to envy.

But there are a handful of jurisdictions out there that are not to be outdone in the competition for the title of “climate leader.” One of those is the UK. Ten years before New York even entered the competition, the UK had enacted its Climate Change Act of 2008, setting an initial round of legally-binding emissions reduction targets (80% below 1990 levels by 2050). Then, in 2019 the UK upped the ante, committing by statute to “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions for its entire economy by 2050.

We know from my last post how things are going with this “climate leadership” thing in New York: five years into the competition, New York’s greenhouse gas emissions have actually increased substantially, as two large new natural gas power plants have replaced electricity generation from two prematurely-closed emissions-free nuclear facilities, while generation of electricity from wind and solar has barely budged.

Has the UK been any more successful? Rupert Darwall, writing under the auspices of the Real Clear Foundation, has produced a comprehensive update, with a date of December 2023. The title tells you all you need to know: “The Folly of Climate Leadership: Net zero and Britain’s Disastrous Energy Policies.”

The short summary of Darwall’s Report is that there is nothing but bad news for Britain. By contrast to New York, the UK has actually moved forward with massive construction of “renewable” facilities to generate electricity, mostly in the form of wind turbines. What it has gotten for its efforts is far more nameplate capacity of facilities for generation, but far less electricity actually generated. Costs that were predicted by advocates to decrease substantially have instead increased steadily. The percent of electricity generated from the “renewables” has gotten to around 35%, but has stalled out at that level, and the latest round of offers of acreage for offshore wind development attracted no bidders even at prices a multiple of what additional natural gas facilities would cost. In short, the UK appears stuck, with its consumers paying higher costs for power indefinitely, but with no path forward from here to the promised net zero utopia.

Darwall compares trends in electricity prices charged to commercial and industrial business in the UK and U.S. over the period from 2004 to 2022. The UK prices have steadily pulled away as the percent of electricity generation from “renewables” has increased. Here is Darwall’s chart from page 51 of his Report:

Darwall attributes the growing divergence in prices mostly to divergence in fossil fuel production. In the UK, fracking for natural gas has been completely blocked by environmental regulations. Meanwhile, in the U.S., Darwall writes:

By 2009, natural gas output had increased by 14.3 percent from its trough, reaching its highest level since 1974. In the next 10 years, US natural gas output surged a staggering 64.4 percent, to 33,899 billion cubic feet (bcf), 56.0 percent higher than its previous peak of 21,731 bcf in 1973.

In return for greatly increased electricity generation from wind and solar, the UK has dug itself into the perverse situation of ever-increasing nameplate generation capacity, but simultaneously falling output of electricity. Darwall:

Between 2009 and 2020, . . . a 15.5 percent increase in nameplate generating capacity produced 21.6 percent less electricity. In 2009, 1 MW of capacity produced 4,312 MWh of electricity. In 2020, 1 MW of capacity generated 3,094 MWh, a decline of 28.3 percent.

Has the UK at least made some progress in “saving the planet”? Here is my favorite chart from the Report, found on page 28:

The UK has gone a long way toward destroying its industrial base, but its emissions reductions are so small as to be barely noticeable in the overall world picture, and totally swamped by increases elsewhere, mostly from China. The rest of the world is getting a good laugh at Britain’s expense. As Darwall states, “The metric of leadership success is followship.” By that metric, as well as every other, Britain’s “climate leadership” is a total disaster.

January 18, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Updates On The March To The Great Green Energy Future

By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | January 12, 2024

The cries of climate alarm get ever louder and more urgent. (E.g., New York Times, January 9, “It’s confirmed: 2023 was the planet’s warmest year on record and perhaps in the last 100,000 years. By far.” ) We’re all about to boil! Something must be done!

OK, but then there is the proposed solution: Order up by government fiat that our current fully working and inexpensive energy system must be replaced with a never-demonstrated pipe dream conjured up by political science and gender studies majors who know nothing about how an energy system works. We’re far enough into this by now that some of the pieces are starting to blow up in dramatic fashion. Are we allowed to notice?

Here in New York, we got into this game mainly with two pieces of legislation, both enacted in 2018 — at the state level, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act; and in the City, Local Law 97. With both laws the pols set the deadlines for compliance at dates seemingly far in the future, expecting that they would no longer be around to be held accountable. The first of those two laws ordered up state-wide mandates for “decarbonizing” the economy, starting with a requirement for 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030; and the second set limits for carbon emissions for buildings in New York City, some of which have just kicked in effective January 1, 2024. Sure enough, the Mayor at the time of enactment is gone, almost the entire City Council is gone (term limits), and the Governor at the time is also gone.

So where are we?

The Manhattan Contrarian Energy Storage Report of December 1, 2022, led off by sounding a clear alarm: getting electricity from intermittent wind and solar well past 50% of total generation would require enormous quantities of energy to be stored, with technical requirements, including duration of storage, well beyond the capability of any battery currently existing or likely to be invented any time soon. Essentially, if fossil fuels are to be eliminated, there is only one realistic possibility for meeting the storage requirements: hydrogen.

In mid-2023, the New York Independent System Operator, to its credit, recognized the problem — although it buried that recognition deep in a report when it should be shouting about the problem from the rooftops. From NYISO’s Power Trends 2023 Report, revised August 2023, page 7, starting in the middle of a paragraph and without any emphasis:

[T]o achieve the mandates of the CLCPA, new emission-free generating technologies with the necessary reliability service attributes will be needed to replace the flexible, dispatchable capabilities of fossil fuel generation and sustain production for extended periods of time. Such emission-free technologies, either individually or in aggregate, are not yet available on a commercial scale.

With hydrogen as the only possible such “emissions-free generating technology,” how much would hydrogen cost as the solution to this problem, particularly if one follows the hypothesis that it must be created without any use of fossil fuels? My Report, page 14, noted that existing commercial production of this so-called “green” hydrogen was “negligible,” leaving no good benchmark for understanding what the costs might be. As a substitute, I ran some rough numbers based on cost of wind and solar generators to make the electricity and efficiency of the electrolysis process. The result was a very rough estimate that this “green” hydrogen would cost “somewhere in the range of 5 to 10 times more” than natural gas (page 17).

Well, now some new precision has come into view. In July 2022 the UK government launched what it calls its First Hydrogen Allocation Round (HAR 1), to obtain bids and award contracts to produce this so-called “green” hydrogen using wind power. The process took a while, but here from December 14, 2023 is the announcement of the first round of contract awards. Excerpt:

Following the launch of the first hydrogen allocation round (HAR1) in July 2022, we have selected the successful projects to be offered contracts. We are pleased to announce 11 successful projects, totalling 125MW capacity. HAR1 puts the UK in a leading position internationally: this represents the largest number of commercial scale green hydrogen production projects announced at once anywhere in Europe. . . . The 11 projects have been agreed at a weighted average strike price of £241/MWh.

£241/MWh? At today’s exchange rate of 1.27 $/£, that would be $306/MWh. Prices of natural gas are generally quoted in $/MMBTU rather than per MWh, but here is EIA’s latest Electricity Monthly Update, dated December 21 and covering the month of October 2023. It gives natural gas prices in the per MWh units. The “price of natural gas at New York City” is given as $11.32/MWh. That would make the price that the UK has just agreed to pay to buy this “green” hydrogen stuff approximately 27 times what we can buy natural gas for here in New York to obtain the same energy content.

And that $306/MWh is just for the hydrogen. It includes nothing for the massive new facilities (underground salt caverns?) to store the stuff, for a new pipeline network to transport it, and for a new collection of power plants to burn it.

To be at least a little fair, natural gas prices do vary considerably by location. Even within the U.S., some prices per the EIA Report are about double the New York City price, and in Europe maybe four times the New York City price. But those prices are affected by European demand for LNG from the U.S., due to their own stupid decision to ban fracking for natural gas combined with the unpleasantness in Russia.

And even if you figure that green hydrogen can be produced for “only” 7 – 10 times what it costs to buy natural gas, rather than 25 – 30 times, is anybody really going to go forward with such a project to replace all natural gas in an entire modern economy? It would be completely nuts.

Finally, let’s take a look at how New York is progressing toward that 2030 mandated goal of 70% of electricity from renewables. Data on electricity production for New York State for 2023 are just out from the NYISO. The good people from Nuclear New York (advocates for more nuclear power plants) have compiled the ISO data into a helpful aggregate chart covering the years 2019 (immediately after enactment of the Climate Change Act) to 2023. Here is the chart:

Out of 152.3 TWh of electricity produced or imported in 2023, fossil fuels continued to provide 63.3 TWh (41.5%). Most of the imports (14.5%) are undoubtedly from fossil fuels as well. Wind/solar/other provided just 12.1 TWh, or 7.9% of the total, barely up from about 6% in 2019. And that’s now suddenly going to go to 70% by 2030? Ridiculous. Meanwhile, the big story leaps off the page, as the Nuclear New York guys emphasize in the headline. The State forced the premature closure of two nuclear plants in 2020 and 2021, which caused the (carbon free) nuclear share of the total to drop from about 29% to only 18%; and almost all of that was taken up by two new natural gas plants, causing the fossil fuel share of the total to soar from only 34% to 41.5%. No person looking at this chart would ever conclude that New York has spent the past five years embarked on a crash program to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar. That process is going absolutely nowhere.

The truth is that the march to the Great Green Energy Future is over, but no one is yet willing to admit that.

January 15, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Scholz pushes fake Russian threats to distract Germans from economic problems

By Ahmed Adel | January 15, 2024

Germany is preparing for a war between NATO and Russia, which, according to the scenario of the German Defence Ministry, could begin in the European summer of 2025 after the defeat of the Ukrainian Army, reported Bild with reference to a secret document of the Bundeswehr. This is evidently a desperate attempt by the German chancellor to distract citizens from their economic woes.

According to the newspaper, citing a classified German military document, the escalation could begin as early as next month with the start of an active Russian offensive against the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

According to Bild, the German military considers the Suwałki Gap between Belarus and the Russian region of Kaliningrad to be the most likely site of confrontation. A situation could escalate in October if Russia deploys troops and medium-range missiles to Kaliningrad, and from December 2024, an artificially induced “border conflict” and “clashes with numerous casualties” could unfold as Russia would take advantage of political chaos in the US following the presidential election.

“The actions of Russia and the West are described precisely, indicating the location and month, and will culminate in the deployment of hundreds of thousands of NATO troops and the imminent start of war in the summer of 2025,” writes the article.

However, the article’s authors leave open the question of how this hypothetical escalation will end.

This is, of course, a ridiculous suggestion by the German Defence Ministry, especially as Moscow has repeatedly stressed that it does not want conflict with NATO or anything beyond its special military operation in Ukraine. Rather, this is an attempt by Chancellor Olaf Scholz to instil an unjustified fear in German society as his popularity continues to plummet in the context of a stuttering economy and continued failed policies.

More than 70% of Germans are dissatisfied with Scholz, according to a survey carried out by the INSA Institute for Bild. Specifically, 72% of voters do not approve of his performance, which is three percentage points more than at the beginning of December. Only one in five, 20%, think that Scholz has done a good job.

According to the researchers, 76% of those surveyed are generally dissatisfied with what the federal government does, whilst only 17% of citizens are satisfied. It is the worst indicator of the ruling coalition since it was formed in December 2021, Bild noted.

In 2023, the Scholz-led government faced numerous economic and leadership challenges that undermined public trust. Persistent inflationary pressures, exacerbated by fiscal policy, undermined household budgets, which caused widespread discontent. The lack of strategic direction and perceived indecision on critical issues, such as energy policy following the adoption of sanctions against Russia, further fuelled scepticism among voters. The leadership crisis, characterised by internal conflicts and disagreements, damaged the effectiveness and cohesion of the German government.

What especially frustrates Germans is the fact that sanctions were imposed on Russia, which has become the fifth-largest economy in the world by volume, whilst Germany is in recession. With a public budget deficit estimated at around 60 billion euros, the very model of the German economy appears to be threatened.

Germany is officially in recession and is expected to have ended 2023 with a drop in GDP of around 0.3%, according to a forecast from the European Commission. This is one of the worst economic results in the bloc, given that the growth forecast for the entire European Union in 2023 is 0.6%. Among the causes is the energy crisis that has hit Germany harder than the rest of the European bloc, mainly because the Germans slashed their supply of Russian energy after the start of the special military operation in February 2022.

Furthermore, with the increase in energy prices resulting from sanctions against Russia, Germany has also suffered an increase in general price inflation in the economy, forcing the European Central Bank to raise interest rates, thus affecting the population’s purchasing power and impacting consumption. Consequently, German companies have not only lost international competitiveness with the application of sanctions against the Russians, but now the country runs the risk of entering a process of deindustrialisation.

Under these conditions, the extreme right is experiencing a resurgence. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has hit an all-time high approval rating of 24% and has the potential to gain a few more percentile points with the immense failure of the ruling coalition.

What is undeniable is the fact that Germany is experiencing a rapid decline, all spurred on by the reckless policies of Scholz that prioritised American interests instead of German, and he is now resorting to a fake Russian threat in a desperate attempt to distract citizens from their social and economic problems that he is responsible for.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

January 15, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Asymmetric Warfare: Why the Houthis Can Beat the Collective West

By Russell Bentley – Sputnik – 14.01.2024

Dr. Michael Parenti once said, “Economic violence is physical violence in slow motion.” The economic sanctions against Iraq in the 1990’s led directly to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children. Economic sanctions can be a weapon as deadly as any artillery shell or cruise missile.

The Houthis might at first appear to be vastly outmatched by the US/UK armada that has struck Yemen, but militarily and economically, the US and Europe are actually much more vulnerable than the Houthis. To put it simply, in both economic and military terms, the US, UK and Europe, and Israel, have a lot more to lose.

The Houthis are not alone – Hezbollah, considered to be one of the most effective fighting forces in the world today, has an estimated 100,000 highly trained and motivated and very well armed soldiers in Lebanon, and is already at (undeclared, but de facto) war with Israel, and will probably escalate in the next few days. In October, 1983, Hezbollah was able to kill 305 US and French occupation soldiers at a cost of only 2 KIA on the Hezbollah side.

Of the US and French soldiers, 220 were US Marines, the greatest single loss in one day of US Marines since the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. In the 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War, in which Israel invaded southern Lebanon, Hezbollah was able to inflict “unacceptable casualties” on Israeli forces, which resulted in the withdrawal of IDF forces and the signing of UNSC1701. While the Lebanese casualties were significantly higher than Israeli, the conflict is generally seen as a tactical and strategic defeat for Israel. Israel and their US/EU allies would do well to remember both of these battles before continuing to escalate an already extremely volatile situation beyond the point of no return.

Escalation between Hezbollah and the IDF on Lebanon’s southern border will not only expand the current area of conflict into the eastern Mediterranean, it can quickly become a serious threat to the Israeli city of Haifa, only 20 miles from the Lebanese border. Haifa is Israel’s 3rd largest city, with a population of around 300,000. The Port of Haifa is Israel’s second largest by cargo tonnage, and the Haifa oil refinery (the largest, and one of only two in Israel) processes more than 66 million barrels of crude oil per year, more than a million barrels per week. The port, and especially the refinery would be prime targets, and significant damage to either, especially the refinery, would have serious repercussions for the Israeli economy.

The “massive attack” by US/UK naval forces against the Houthis involved airstrikes, as well as approximately 100 cruise missiles, at a cost of more than $1 million each. According to reports published by the Houthi military command and Western media, the attack killed five Houthis. Now, do the math. The US and UK just spent a collective $100 million to kill 5 Houthis and escalate and exacerbate an already volatile situation. Based on assurances from the Houthi government that only Israeli-connected shipping was under threat, the majority of Red Sea shipping traffic had actually continued the Red Sea unhindered.

This is no longer the case. As of January 13th, after the US/UK attacks and their possible continuation, the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners (Intertanko), which represents almost 70 per cent of all internationally traded oil, gas and chemical tankers, said in an advisory to members to “stay well away” from the Bab al Mendab strait, and for vessels travelling south via the Suez Canal to pause north of Yemen. This major disruption of tanker traffic may well have an upward influence on oil prices, coming as it does right on the heels of Saudi Aramco’s announcement of a $2 per barrel discount beginning in February.

The Huthis don’t even have to shoot at any more ships – just the threat of the possibility of Houthi or coalition missiles being fired has been enough to disrupt Red Sea shipping traffic, which carries 12% of all global trade goods, and a staggering 30% of all container goods. It is actually the US/UK “coalition” that has escalated the situation to dangerous levels that now interfere with much more shipping, including tanker traffic.

January 14, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New Polish Chapter in CIA’s Nord Stream Cover Story Signals Growing US-EU Split

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 08.01.2024

European investigators probing the September 2022 attack on the Nord Stream pipeline network have told US business media that Polish officials have refused to cooperate with an international investigation into the incident. But the report is just another attempt to divert attention from Washington’s role in the blasts, a Russian observer says.

Polish officials have dragged their feet in providing any useful info related to the movement of individuals suspected of plotting and carrying out the 2022 attack on the Nord Stream pipeline network and have generally refused to cooperate, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing unnamed ‘European investigators’ looking into the case.

Some European officials are reportedly considering appealing directly to the office of newly elected Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk for help in investigating the sabotage attack, with investigators expressing “suspicions” over Warsaw’s “role and motives” amid the lack of cooperation from the previous government.

The new ‘Polish chapter’ in the CIA-inspired cover story diverting attention from evidence of the US’s central role in the Nord Stream attack comes after more than a year of meticulous attempts to pin the blame on Ukrainians – first in the form of a shadowy amateur group of operatives without connections to any governments, and then to claims that the sabotage was coordinated by Ukrainian special operations colonel Roman Chervinsky, who is now conveniently rotting in a Kiev jail.

The narrative, crafted by US and German media after revelations last year by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that US Navy divers planted explosives on the pipelines under the cover of a NATO drill, claimed that the Ukrainian operatives rented a yacht from a Poland-based, Ukrainian-owned company and proceeded to place explosives on the pipeline infrastructure – situated some 80 and 110 meters underwater in the Baltic Sea.

New Narrative to Distract From Mounting EU-US Tensions

Speaking to Sputnik and asked to comment on why the WSJ piece was published now, Russian political analyst Peter Kolchin explained that it’s designed to reinforce the US narrative about foreign actors’ involvement in the Nord Stream attack, particularly as Europe continues to face the economic consequences resulting from the unprecedented act of sabotage against another NATO country’s infrastructure.

“The United States is currently suffering one diplomatic defeat after another. In the face of problems in the Middle East, in the face of a defeat in Ukraine, it’s very important for Washington to consolidate the entire NATO bloc,” the observer explained. The attack on Nord Stream “is a very difficult topic for the bloc, because factually, the destruction of this infrastructure significantly weakened Europe’s economic capabilities and left it dependent on the US energy sector. Now, Europe is forced to buy American gas and to incur huge costs because of it,” Kolchin noted.

How huge? According to a recent Sputnik review of Eurostat data, EU countries have had to pay some €185 billion ($202 billion US) extra on natural gas over the past 20 months after being cut off – by choice or by force, from cheap Russian pipeline gas. Between early 2022 and late 2023, the bloc spent more on natural gas purchases than it did over the entire eight-year period between 2013 and 2021.

Consisting of four pipelines stretching from Russia to northeastern Germany along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, Nord Stream singlehandedly had the capability to provide Europe with up to 110 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year, equivalent to more than a quarter of the bloc’s 412 bcm consumption in 2021. The September 2022 attack on the infrastructure, combined with Polish and Ukrainian moves to close the taps to Russian gas, have left TurkStream and ship-based LPG the only means for Russian gas to get to EU countries.

The Nord Stream “problem” isn’t going anywhere, Kolchin believes. “Both in Europe and the United States, the mainstream publications and politicians are asking questions about it.” Therefore, “it’s important for Washington to give the public some more or less plausible scenario” regarding the attack.

“Of course, for many months now Washington has been attempting to shift all responsibility onto Ukraine. Here, the appearance of publications in US media adding credibility to a role played by Warsaw is only part of this big campaign. The United States is trying to shift responsibility from itself onto others, in this case Warsaw,” the observer said.

“Poland, which no longer enjoys agency, cannot oppose the will of the United States, and is being forced to accept what Washington is trying to pin on them,” even if in reality, “it has been noted more than once and at the highest levels that the involvement of the United States in the terrorist attack on Nord Stream is obvious,” Kolchin said.

President Putin commented on Washington’s suspected role in the Nord Stream attack at his year-end press conference last month, dismissing European complaints about Russia ‘turning off the taps’ of energy supplies to the region by pointing out that “it wasn’t us that blew up… Nord Stream,” but “most likely the US, or someone at their suggestion.”
Nevertheless, Washington will continue to push its policy line on the Nord Stream incident, regardless of what the evidence, and elementary logic, say, Kolchin believes.

America’s “methodical” approach is particularly important in light of growing splits in the North Atlantic alliance as Washington continues to ride roughshod over Europe’s basic interests, the observer noted.

“Let’s be honest, it’s difficult in principle to speak of any kind of trust within the alliance. And this is largely connected with the Nord Stream events. European countries understand who is responsible, but have very reluctantly been forced to swallow this harsh reality,” the observer summed up.

January 8, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Series of Bad Decisions: Biden Refills Strategic Petroleum Reserve at Cost for US Taxpayers

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 08.01.2024

Team Biden is doing damage control ahead of the election by hastily refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). Alas, it is coming at a cost for American taxpayers as the administration is purchasing crude at twice the historic average, Just the News says.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) is currently buying three million barrels a month to refill the nation’s SPR in the wake of Joe Biden’s release of over 225 million barrels of oil between March 2022 and August 2023, dumping levels in the reserve to the lowest in 40 years.

Tim Stewart, president of the US Oil and Gas Association, alleges that Team Biden is doing nothing short of damage control ahead of the 2024 election given that the nation’s depleted SPR has recently become the public’s concern.

“Prior to 2022, the average person knew nothing about the SPR. That has completely changed. When the lovely 75-year-old blue-haired lady at church complains to me how Biden has drained the SPR – they must have caught the public’s attention,” Stewart told Just the News, an independent US media outlet founded by award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon.

Apparently, the Biden administration would have bought “refill barrels” at a greater pace, but it is facing limits on how much crude can be funneled into the reserve per month. That means it will take a whopping 75 months to bring the SPR back to the level at which it was before US President Joe Biden started draining it.

To sweeten the pill, the US administration triumphantly claims that it is buying oil for the SPR at an average price of $77.31 per barrel, which is considerably below the average of $95 per barrel it was in 2022.

Per Stewart, it’s by no means “a good deal for American taxpayers”: one should bear in mind that the average price paid per barrel in the SPR has been $29.70 per barrel, the expert pointed out.

It appears that the Biden administration is guided by its own political interests rather than those of the nation. It began draining the SPR in spring of 2022, ahead of the midterm election: at the time gasoline prices went up and American voters were not happy with that.

Still, Just the News failed to mention that the hike in prices was partially caused by Team Biden’s energy sanctions slapped on Russia over Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine. If one digs deeper, one would learn that the special military operation started after the Biden administration snubbed Moscow’s draft security agreement aimed at safeguarding Europe’s peace, protecting Russia’s borders and restoring the balance of forces vis-à-vis NATO.

Now, the Biden administration is buying oil at twice the historic average to replenish the SPR before the 2024 presidential election in a bid to look good in the eyes of the US voters. The crux of the matter is that the US administration and the Democratic Party in general may have avoided this tricky situation ahead of the election if it had green-lighted Donald Trump’s initiative to fill the SPR at the time when oil prices were extremely low, per Stewart.

Back in 2020, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, then US President Donald Trump moved to buy oil for the SPR when West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil prices were under $25 per barrel. Trump requested $3 billion from the US Congress to jump at this lucrative opportunity, but Democratic lawmakers nipped the president’s endeavor in the bud. Per Just the News, Democratic lawmakers bragged at the time that they had “eliminated a $3 billion bailout for big oil.”

“They could have picked up several hundred million barrels at $15, but because it was what President Trump wanted, Congress said no,” Stewart told the media outlet.

The Biden administration’s blunders have not gone unnoticed by the US public. A new Gallup poll shows that none of the US federal government’s top officials have a job approval rating above 50%. When it comes to President Joe Biden, he ended 2023 with “a persistently low job approval rating of 39%,” per the pollster.

January 8, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

New Report Highlights Green Failure in Europe and Warns America

By Rick Whitbeck | RealClear Energy | January 4, 2024

As one digests Rupert Darwall’s latest report for the RealClear Foundation, the well-known quote from Spanish philosopher George Santayana might ring through the mind: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Anyone looking to combat the activists pushing a ‘net zero’ agenda here in the U.S. would be wise to read Darwall’s piece, entitled “The Folly of Climate Leadership.”

The analysis tells the story of Great Britain heeding the cries for decarbonization, starting when Parliament wrote an 80% decrease in emissions target into law in 2008. They raised it to 100% – or “net zero” – in 2019. The results have clearly been catastrophic.

Since decarbonization efforts commenced, Britain’s economy has grown at half the rate as it did from 1990-2008. According to a research study from noted British economic historian Nicholas Crafts, that’s the second-worst period of British peacetime growth since 1780.

In addition to the economic malaise, British energy prices have skyrocketed, and Britons are now concerned with how to survive the effect of those costs on their wallets, as they look to heat and power their homes and businesses, travel for work and pleasure and live life as best they can.

The differences between British energy costs and those here in the U.S. are staggering: Britons paid an average of $228 per megawatt hour (MWh) for electricity generated from coal in 2022, whereas Americans paid an average of $27 per MWh. For natural gas, 2022 saw Britons paying $251 per MWh, versus American consumers averaging $61 per MWh for their power.

Darwall’s report also highlights the effects of unchecked and anti-market driven government investment in ‘green’ energy on grid reliability, as intermittent production from wind and solar – coupled with a lack of utility-grade energy storage – dropped electricity generated per gigawatt of capacity falling 28% since 2009.

The same arguments that have crippled Britain’s economy are now being used by the Biden Administration here at home, with zealots in Cabinet-level positions – including Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, and EPA Director Michael Regan – pushing the message from their bully pulpits.

The recent – and completely misnamed – Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress provided the zealots with nearly $400 billion to dole out to supportive organizations and start-ups to jump-start our nation’s push for ‘net zero.’ Those dollars – doled out with few oversights or performance metrics attached in many cases – have produced very few wins in the last year, unless a win is measured in keeping political cronies happy and rich.

Consider: wind energy projects in Nebraska, Colorado, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey were scrapped last year, even after untold millions of federal dollars went to their developers. Over 100 solar companies went bankrupt, and solar projects from California to Florida were shuttered in the middle of their development. Battery storage – a key component to offsetting the intermittency of wind and solar – also saw projects stalled, along with at least one lawsuit filed against a storage company when its solution failed.

Despite the perils of ‘green’ energy dependence shown throughout Europe, the eco-left continues to double down on ridding America of traditional energy sources. Supporting those efforts are ideologue billionaires, who continue to fund net-zero initiatives.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has given well over $1 billion of his personal wealth to the Sierra Club to fund its “Beyond Coal” and “Beyond Carbon” campaigns. Designed to rid the U.S. of every coal-fired power plant by 2030, the Sierra Club/Bloomberg partnership has succeeded in shutting down nearly two-thirds of the plants to-date, with most of the remaining in rural locations, including my home state of Alaska, where alternatives to existing coal plants in the state’s interior don’t readily exist. Without coal, countless Alaskans would have their livelihoods – and very lives – threatened during our long, dark and sub-zero-temperature winters.

With activists entrenched in government bureaucracy, zealots running government agencies and rich men (and women) funding these efforts, only those educated in historical failures of decarbonization – and willing to stand up and fight back against the climate warriors – stand a chance of helping stem the attacks. Darwall’s study should be required reading for anyone looking to build a fortress in their state against job-killing, family-harming decarbonization efforts.

Rick Whitbeck is the Alaska State Director for Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. Contact him at Rick@PowerTheFuture.com and follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @PTFAlaska

January 7, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , | Leave a comment

China’s COSCO halts shipping to Israeli ports: Israeli media

The Cradle | January 7, 2024

Chinese state-owned shipping company COSCO, the fourth largest in the world, has halted sailing to Israeli ports, Israeli media outlet Globes reported on 7 January, in the wake of attacks and attempted seizures of vessels heading to Israel via the Red Sea by Yemeni armed forces.

The Israeli report indicated that the Chinese firm did not disclose a reason for the policy change. COSCO’s offices in Israel have refused to comment on the development.

The Globes report attributed the decision to the close ties between China and Iran, which sells 90 percent of its crude oil exports to Beijing. Iran is a supporter of the Yemeni government and opposes Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.

In a similar development, the Hong Kong-based OOCL halted all cargo deliveries to Israel last month, citing “operational problems.”

In the same month, other major shipping firms, including the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) and CMA CGM, announced their decision to halt shipments to Israel one day after the Yemeni Armed Forces attacked two Israel-bound vessels.

Yemeni forces have been attacking Israeli-bound vessels in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s war on Gaza, which the Sanaa government views as genocide.

Washington and its allies in turn formed the Prosperity Guardian naval coalition and issued an ultimatum to Yemen’s Ansarallah-led government to stop their Red Sea operations or suffer the “consequences.”

Yemen’s actions have forced numerous leading shipping companies to instead travel around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa to reach Europe, extending the shipping times by two weeks and increasing costs.

On 31 December, US naval forces sank three Yemeni boats in the Red Sea, killing ten Yemeni naval soldiers.

From the onset of the Gaza conflict on 7 October, Yemeni military forces have targeted a minimum of 15 merchant vessels either bound for Israeli harbors or owned by entities associated with Israel.

January 7, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Autism tsunami’: Society’s cost to care for expanding, aging autism population will hit $5.54 trillion by 2060

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 5, 2024

The societal costs of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the U.S. are projected to reach $589 billion per year by 2030, $1.36 trillion per year by 2040 and $5.54 trillion per year by 2060 if steps are not taken to prevent the disorder, according to a study published last month.

The paper, “Autism Tsunami: The Impact of Rising Prevalence on the Societal Cost of Autism in the United States,” was first published in 2021, in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (JADD). It was retracted almost two years later by the publisher and editor, citing “concerns” with methodology and the authors’ “non-financial interests.”

Last month, Science, Public Health Policy and the Law peer-reviewed and republished the study — the first to project present and future costs of ASD that links rising costs to the increasing prevalence of the disorder.

The authors found that previous studies, which didn’t account for increasing prevalence, tended to overestimate current costs — because they assumed prevalence rates among adults are the same as rates among children — and underestimate future costs associated with a growing autistic population with shifting care needs.

Researchers Mark Blaxill, Cynthia Nevison, Ph.D., and Toby Rogers, Ph.D., projected future ASD costs in three scenarios: a base case scenario assuming the continuation of existing trends; a low scenario providing a conservative estimate of future costs; and a prevention scenario exploring possibility of future mitigation of environmental causes.

But these two premises of the paper — that prevalence is increasing and that environmental intervention is possible — made a straightforward modeling paper controversial and were the basis of the “concerns” raised that led to its retraction.

Those premises ran counter to the deeply held assumptions of the autism research and treatment industry, which continues to sidestep the issue of increasing prevalence and holds that autism is primarily a genetic and not an environmental disease.

U.S. could surpass 6% rates of ASD in children in 2024, 7% in 2032

To build their model, the researchers estimated four key parameters: the historic and future prevalence of ASD, the future size of the ASD population, the cost per individual over the course of a lifetime, and inflation projections.

Prevalence projections were based on the California Department of Developmental Services caseload data from 1931 to 2016. The researchers used U.S. Census Bureau population predictions to translate prevalence into actual numbers of people with autism. They multiplied those by different cost categories partitioned by age group and severity of ASD and applied an inflation index to their projections.

Nevison told The Defender this approach to calculating future costs was built on previous models that similarly identified cost categories and multiplied them by autism populations in each age group.

“But we used a more sophisticated prevalence model, and that provided an advance over previous work,” she said.

Their ASD prevalence model showed that based on current trends, the U.S. could surpass 6% rates of ASD in children in 2024 and 7% in 2032, and then would likely rise more slowly after that. This differed from previous models, which predicted continuous exponential growth.

Costs associated with ASD included “non-medical services” like community care and day programs, individual and parent productivity losses, estimated special education costs, early and behavioral intervention and medical costs.

Rising prevalence itself makes costs go up, the study showed, but so does the fact that the mix of costs changes over time as the autism population ages and has different care needs.

As people age, their needs change, Blaxill told The Defender, “You’re dealing with education and parental loss productivity in the early years, and you’re dealing with residential services and medical care and lost adult productivity of disabled people. So it’s a whole different profile.”

As the first generation of parents of children of the autism epidemic, who shouldered much of the burden of care-taking, begin to die around 2040, according to the study, costs of care that had been borne by them will shift onto state and federal governments.

The cost increase, Blaxill said, “is radical, it will cost $5 trillion a year.”

Nevison told The Defender that for their “prevention” scenario they looked to an existing example with good data where ASD rates had gone down.

She and a colleague published that research in JADD in 2020, showing that while ASD rates, which had increased for all U.S. children across birth years 1993-2000, either plateaued or declined among white families living in wealthy counties, suggesting those families made changes that lowered their children’s risk of ASD.

“The Prevention scenario assumes that these parental strategies and opportunities already used by wealthy parents to lower their children’s risk of ASD can be identified and made available rapidly to lower-income children and ethnic minorities, who are currently experiencing the most rapid growth in ASD prevalence,” the “Autism Tsunami” authors wrote.

The paper does not indicate what those changes may have been, but Blaxill told The Defender they hypothesized the changes happened among families who followed alternative vaccination schedules and other lifestyle changes.

Even in the prevention scenario, the paper found, the cost of ASD will skyrocket to $3.7 ± 0.8 trillion annually by 2060 because it still needs to account for the demographic momentum of the large ASD population born over the last three decades.

The authors concluded that rising autism rates must be taken seriously as a public health and economic policy issue.

“Paradoxically, the future costs of autism loom so large that, rather than responding with a sense of urgency as one might expect, policymakers thus far have generally failed to engage with the policy implications at all,” the authors wrote.

“We hope this paper will serve as a wake-up call for the public health emergency that the societal cost of autism represents to the economic future of the U.S.”

A ‘digital scarlet letter for eternity’

After the paper “sailed through peer review” at JADD, and became one of the journal’s most downloaded papers, there was immediate pushback, particularly in articles posted on the Spectrum News website (now The Transmitter ). Former JADD Editor-in-Chief Fred Volkmar launched an investigation into the study based on concerns raised.

One article on Spectrum even included a Twitter post that implied the authors’ idea of prevention was “eugenics,” an accusation the authors told The Defender was extremely shocking and hurtful and clearly an attempt to “cancel” them.

Rogers told The Defender, and detailed in a Substack post, that they had expected some negative response from gatekeepers, “because we broke new ground and the autism debate is always fraught in this country.”

But, he said, he and his co-authors were surprised when they were informed that Volkmar solicited new critical reviews and gave them one week to respond.

Rogers said in retrospect they realized “the die was cast at that point” and a decision had been made to undermine the article. However, the researchers “naively believed” they could provide rigorous responses to the reviews, which offered “nothing substantive” and the publication would stand.

The retraction statement indicated there were methodological concerns along with concerns that the authors, Blaxill, editor-at-large for Age of Autism and chief financial officer of the Holland Center, Nevison, a former board member of SafeMinds, and Rogers, who writes the uTobian Substack and according to Spectrum had “written for the Children’s Health Defense Fund,” had not revealed their “non-financial” conflicts of interest.

According to Spectrum News these “undeclared conflicts” were the authors’ “anti-vaccine” views. Blaxill and Nevison had both previously published papers in JADD, with no similar concerns raised.

The authors noted in their response to reviewers, that the concerns enumerated by Volkmar mirrored those in Spectrum’s “hostile blog post.”

Spectrum News is fully funded by the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI), from which Volkmar has received millions in research funding.

SFARI has a budget of over $100 million per year and since 2003 has dedicated almost $1 billion to autism research. That funding is largely dedicated to research focusing on the genetic basis for autism.

Rogers wrote, “The Simons Foundation has largely captured the field of autism research and they have hundreds of academics who are dependent on their largesse.”

“Rather than change direction based on new information the Simons Foundation doubled down on their wrongheaded strategy and they put the word out that ‘this article needs to get got,’” he added.

The authors also noted that no researcher in the history of JADD had listed a personal belief as an “undisclosed non-financial conflict of interest,” and that their premise that the rise in autism numbers is real and is primarily driven by environmental factors is a legitimate scientific viewpoint shared by others.

The authors also responded in detail to what they deemed to be minor comments by three reviewers.

Yet, the journal decided to retract the article, attaching what Rogers described as “a digital scarlet letter for eternity, ‘RETRACTED!’”

The authors attempted to sue but did not prevail.

“The whole process has been weaponized to serve power and money and nobody’s standing up for, or very few people are standing up for good science and proper methods and scientific norms and all that stuff that we would expect to be foundational to all this sort of thing,” Rogers told The Defender.

“We are being censored because of a word that does not even appear in the article — vaccines,” Rogers wrote.

“The unstated implication about the California study was that those parents were likely operating on different vaccine schedules or skipping vaccines. The public health agencies never investigated this trend,” Rogers said, “because they are scared that they might find an association between vaccines and autism.”

He added:

“This cowardly act of censorship by JADD and Springer [its publisher] is a stunning admission of guilt by the mainstream gatekeepers. They simply cannot have a conversation about the facts because they know that they will lose. Censorship is all that they have left.”

Study predictions proving true

Since “Autism Tsunami” was first published, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network, which conducts biannual surveillance of ASD prevalence, has issued two reports confirming a continued rise in ASD rates.

When the CDC first began collecting data in 2000, rates were 1 in 150 children diagnosed with ASD. In the 2021 report, the ADDM found that 1 in 44 or 2.27% of American 8-year-olds had ASD and in the 2023 report, it found that 1 in 36 (2.8%) 8-year-old children — 4% of boys and 1% of girls have ASD.

ADDM also reported that autism prevalence was higher among Black, Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander children than among white and biracial children.

Yet the CDC continues to suggest that the numbers “might reflect improved screening, awareness and access to services” rather than actual growing rates.

Nevison told The Defender that given these growing rates, she is very concerned about the future of those living with ASD, especially given that it is already apparent that public services are unable to keep up with the needs of children on the autistic spectrum.

In her own school district, there is a critical shortage of educators who could serve children with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), many of whom have ASD.

Data from the U.S. Department of Education indicate this is a national problem — 42 states and Washington, D.C., have fewer special education teachers than schools need. Many children in special education are diagnosed with ASD.

Shortage of adult facilities already a reality in Massachusetts

“Autism Tsunami” pointed to the fact that the growing numbers of children diagnosed with ASD over the last few decades are or will be soon entering adulthood and will need different, and expensive, services from those provided by the already stretched Department of Education, such as residential care.

A new investigation on residential care for people with ASD published last week by the Boston Globe reported that the numbers predicted by “Autism Tsunami” are already materializing in Massachusetts.

“A record number of children with intellectual disabilities or autism turn 22 years old this year and qualify for adult services with the Department of Developmental Services,” the Globe wrote.

That number has doubled in the past 10 years to more than 1,430 people “driven by the tremendous increase in children with autism. Autistic children now account for more than half of these new adults.”

“There has been very little planning to prepare for this,” Michael Borr, the parent of an adult son with autism and former chairman of Advocates for Autism of Massachusetts, told The Globe.

In the past, Borr said, “I would talk about the tsunami that is coming. It’s not coming any more; it’s here.”

The Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services, which licenses and runs group homes, last year informed the legislature that it has an “extremely limited” capacity to provide housing to autistic adults who have different needs than their typical clients.

The Globe investigation also found that many hundreds of children and adults with autism in residential schools have been physically assaulted or neglected at residences with low-paid and poorly trained caregivers.

The newspaper provided several examples of serious assaults on non-verbal residents by caregivers.

Massachusetts group homes for adults have more than 4,000 vacancies for direct care staff, which is more than one-quarter of the necessary workforce.

And “while federal law guarantees special education services for disabled children, adult services are largely dependent on eligibility criteria and funding,” according to The Globe, leading to a lot of uncertainty for the aging parents of autistic young adults.

Blaxill told The Defender that without interventions to slow ASD prevalence rates, “It’s going to grow so fast, it’ll break the system. If we go from maybe 1 or 2 million people — most of them children with autism — to 10, 15, or 20 million people with autism — most of them adults — that’s a dramatically different service population and cost problem and cost profile.”

Blaxill, who also is the parent of an autistic child, said the problem isn’t only the cost, but for people with ASD, “The parents are their advocate. We take care of them. But we’re all getting old.”

He said he’s constantly worried for his daughter’s future. “When we’re gone, who’s going to watch over her? Who’s going to advocate for her with the state? Who’s going to protect her from abuse or violence?”

“It’s a crisis,” he said.

The major barrier to confronting this crisis, Rogers told The Defender, isn’t just Big Pharma. There is an entire autism industry that has sprung up that includes pharma, but also researchers, nonprofits, academic journals and more, he said.

“That industry is worth upwards of a trillion dollars and they don’t want to have a conversation about root causes or prevention. They want to make money from the disease industry.”

Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

January 6, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Migration as Economic Imperialism

By Gregory Elich | January 5, 2024

Numbering an estimated 169 million, international migrant laborers are generally regarded in mainstream economic circles as playing a substantial role in poverty alleviation and economic development in their home countries. This is accomplished, it is asserted, through remittances sent home by migrants, reaching an estimated $647 billion arriving in low- and moderate-income countries in 2022, a total that surpasses foreign direct investment in those nations.  As one World Bank policy researcher explains, remittances “have a profound impact on the living standards of people in the developing countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.”

In his latest book, Migration as Economic Imperialism, political analyst Immanuel Ness challenges and complicates that simplified narrative, situating the global migrant labor system in the broader context of the long history of resource and labor extraction between the Global North and Global South.

January 5, 2024 Posted by | Book Review, Economics | Leave a comment

McDonald’s latest business titan to face impact of pro-Israel stance

The Cradle | January 5, 2024

The CEO of McDonald’s, Chris Kempczinski, said on 4 January that several markets in West Asia and some outside of the region were facing a “meaningful business impact” due to the war between the Palestinian resistance and Israel. 

Kempczinski also said that “associated misinformation” about the company has been a reason for the financial issues the brand is facing, and that the misinformation surrounding McDonald’s was “disheartening and ill-founded.”

Western Israeli-linked fast food chains, including McDonald’s and Starbucks, have seen large grassroots boycott campaigns emerge over pro-Israel stances and alleged financial ties with Israel. 

“In every country where we operate, including in Muslim countries, McDonald’s is proudly represented by local owner-operators who work tirelessly to serve and support their communities while employing thousands of their fellow citizens,” Kempczinski said in a social media post. “That local community connection is the genius of the McDonald’s system.”

West Asian locations of McDonald’s are part of the company’s international developmental licensed markets division, a section that generates around 10 percent of the company’s revenue. 

McDonald’s franchisee in Malaysia, owned by Saudi Arabia’s Lionhorn Pte Ltd, filed a lawsuit against BDS Malaysia, accusing the group of “defamation,” and is seeking damages of over $1 million. Meanwhile, the Israel franchisee has supported the Israeli army by supplying its forces with free meals, according to BDS, “during the ongoing genocide of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.”

Starbucks, another Western, Israeli-linked company, has also come out to say that the negative views brought upon the brand have been “influenced by misrepresentation on social media of what we stand for.”

In December 2023, the losses of Starbucks, a Seattle-based company, stood at $11 billion in value during the last quarter, due to Palestinian solidarity boycotts and employee strikes. 

The company tried to bounce back on losses by implementing a scheme during the holiday season that would allow consumers to receive a free holiday cup with every purchase. 

When announcing the gimmick in mid-November last year, the company’s market share crashed by 8.96 percent, accounting for billions in losses, the lowest the company has experienced since 1992.

January 5, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

US Pressured Dutch Chipmaker ASML to Halt Sales to China

By Chimauchem Nwosu – Sputnik – 02.01.2024

A Netherland-based multinational microchip maker ASML Holding NV has halted scheduled shipments of production equipment to China at the behest of the United States.

That came days before the implementation of export controls on advanced ultraviolet lithography machines, sources familiar with the matter revealed to the press.

ASML is the sole producer of deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines vital for the semiconductor industry, which is booming in China — much to the chagrin of politicians in Washington.

Under Biden’s government the US is stepping up attempts to hold back Beijing’s rapid development in the advanced semiconductor sector, with its allies also constraining chip tech exports.

Last year, Huawei Technologies debuted the Mate 60 Pro smartphone, featuring the indigenously-produced Kirin 9000S chip. The development was seen by the US as a challenge to Apple’s iPhone 15, which is powered by next-generation chips produced using ASML’s immersion lithography and was launched in 2023.

ASML confirmed that the Dutch authorities had restricted the export of specific lithography systems to China. Addressing media reports, the Dutch chipmaker mentioned ongoing talks with the US regarding export restrictions, offering no more details.

As the news broke, the stock values of Chinese chipmakers saw dips in their stock values. Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC), a key supplier of Huawei’s 7-nanometer processors, saw its stock fall by three percent in Hong Kong on Tuesday. Hua Hong Semiconductor suffered a similar slump, dropping by 2.8 percent.

ASML, Europe’s most valuable technology firm, remained relatively stable at €679.80 at 9:32 a.m. in Amsterdam trading after falling by as much as 1.8 percent earlier.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan contacted the Dutch government late last year about the ASML’s supply of the immersion deep ultraviolet lithography machines to China. Dutch officials told the White House to speak directly to the European chip giant.

Deliveries of some Chinese orders of the machines, each priced in the tens of millions of dollars, were reportedly canceled although the precise number remains undisclosed.

A representative from the Chinese Foreign Ministry denounced the US for meddling in China’s affairs, labeling it as a demonstration of American “hegemony” imposing artificial restrictions on other nations.

The official also called upon the Dutch authorities to “respect the spirit of the contract and world order, to safeguard the mutual benefits of the two countries.”

Under former president Donald Trump in 2019 the US pressured the Dutch government to block ASML, the sole producer of deep ultraviolet lithography machines vital for semiconductor production, from selling to China.

The Biden administration followed suit by pressuring the Netherlands to tighten export controls on ASML’s second-tier DUV machines to China from January 1 this year. In response, Beijing increased its imports of the restricted machines.

Chinese customs figues show imports of lithography machines into the country surged fivefold to $3.7 billion from July to November 2023.

In Q3 2023, China accounted for nearly half of ASML’s sales, representing 46 percent, which marked a significant increase from 24 percent in Q2 and just 8 percent in Q1 ending in March. This surge came as regional companies hastened their machine imports in anticipation of forthcoming export controls.

In October, ASML’s departing CEO, Peter Wennink, alerted shareholders that the imposed constraints might affect around 15 percent of their sales in China. He has voiced opposition, fearing these actions might prompt China to forge its own technological solutions.

“The more you put them under pressure, the more likely it is that they will double up their efforts,” Wennink told a news outlet.

January 2, 2024 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »