Wednesday, June 30, 2010

China’s Illegal Subsidies to Its Paper Industry Threaten U.S. Jobs
  Employment/Jobs piece by Press Release: Steven Capozzola

WASHINGTON - Heavily subsidized by the Chinese government in violation of global trading rules, the Chinese paper industry has tripled production over the past decade, killing jobs throughout the United States and driving up the massive U.S. trade deficit with China, according to a report released today by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

The EPI report, No Paper Tiger: Subsidies to China’s Paper Industry from 2002–2009, says that China’s rapid rise in the global paper industry has been fueled by more than $33 billion in government subsidies from 2002 to 2009. The full report can be found at http://www.americanmanufacturing.org/ .

The U.S. paper industry is large and highly competitive, employing 474,000 workers in nearly 5,000 plants in the 2005–2007 period. However, thousands of U.S. paper producers, and the more than 470,000 remaining jobs, are at risk due to the rapid growth of highly subsidized paper exports from China. Almost every state has workers in the paper sector, with California, Georgia, Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin having the highest number of paper industry workers.

In Arizona, for example, some 3,095 jobs are at stake, mainly because of China’s massive subsidies in the face of global overcapacity in paper. The congressional districts that could be hit hardest in Arizona are the 1st, 2nd and 7th Districts.

“China’s massive subsidies to its paper sector are doing severe damage to the U.S. paper industry, its workers and their families,” said Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM). “The only way to stop the bleeding is for U.S. policymakers to take action against China’s blatant violations of trade laws, including sweeping subsidies to paper and many other industries.”

China’s export-driven paper industry has added 26 percent of new production capacity on average every year since 2004, increasing the U.S. trade deficit with China. Imports from China’s paper industry to the United States are rising faster than those from any other country. In February 2010, the report estimates, the annualized growth rate of Chinese paper and paper-product imports into the United States was 22 percent.

China has no natural competitive advantage in papermaking and lacks the natural resources to fuel the industry. China’s forest base is among the smallest in the world per capita. Consequently, the country is the world’s largest importer of pulp and recycled paper.

Despite the explosion in new China paper mills, the country’s paper industry uses outdated, obsolete and polluting machinery and technology, contributing to China’s growing status as one of the world’s leading polluters, according to the report, which was written by Usha C.V. Haley, Chaired Professor of International Business at Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand, and an EPI research associate.

The EPI report estimates that subsidies to China’s paper industry have included:

• $25 billion for pulp;
• $3 billion for coal;
• $1.7 billion for recycled paper;
• $778 million for electricity;
• $442 million in subsidy income reported by companies; and
• Loan-interest subsidies of $2 billion.

China’s strategy of dominating the global paper market through illegal subsidies is especially evident because it has no inherent cost advantages in the capital-intensive paper industry. Labor makes up only about 4 percent of the costs in the industry; in contrast, imported recycled paper and pulp comprise more than 45 percent.

“Raw materials, which make up three-fourths of the costs of producing Chinese paper, as well as electricity, coal and transportation, have nearly doubled in price over the last decade,” Professor Haley said in the report. “Yet, Chinese paper sells at a substantial discount compared to U.S. or European paper.”

Steven Capozzola, David Roscow
http://www.epi.org/

Original: http://epi.3cdn.net/f1b3be3c0ea6770797_rdm6ib2ie.pdf

The Alliance for American Manufacturing is a nonpartisan, nonprofit partnership of several leading U.S. manufacturers and the United Steelworkers.

China’s Illegal Subsidies to Its Paper Industry Threaten U.S. Jobs

Posted by Press Release: Steven Capozzola on 6/30/10

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