A revelation

[Cheese]

I visited Menard's the other day and was looking to purchase some trim boards. I was looking specifically for cementious based products that would work with Hardie Plank siding.

In the process I stumbled upon this stuff.  [eek]

This was certainly an eye opener for me, how is it that a country that has as large of a timber harvesting industry as we have, can have some real competition from abroad. I get the Baltic birch thing...I get the rare wood thing, but simple 3/4" thick pine boards primed from China? Really?
I can't even begin to understand the economics behind this product that are needed to make it a viable business model. The first thought that jumped to mind was the Japanese motorcycle dumping in the 1980's, but that was 40 years ago and I'm sure more robust economic models are needed today...or are they? 

[attachimg=1]

 

[rmwarren]

Excess production capacity + state sponsored industries?

Reading a lot these days about dumping worldwide, not only in the US. Seems more prevelant than just a few industries crying out for protectionism in their specific vertical. If a country that relies on production at its core for social stability makes more stuff than it can domestically consume the excess stuff has to go somewhere.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/28/business/china-goods-exports-trade/index.html

Temu is a symptom of this.

RMW

 

[Mini Me]

Excess production capacity + state sponsored industries?

Reading a lot these days about dumping worldwide, not only in the US.

The motor industry in every country is state sponsored and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. When the Australian Government told Ford and GM their Australian operation was not going to be given  any more tax payer funding they spat the dummy, shut up shop and in Ford's case set up production in Thailand because the Thai's funded it.

 

[Crazyraceguy]

Make sense, the state has an interest in keeping vehicles on the roads. All of the associated taxes/fees, employment of government employees, etc. Not to mention all of the employment involved in the manufacturing of parts, repairs, maintenance, etc......and of course, the taxes of those people.

All of this talk (worldwide) about limiting/eliminating personal transportation, is flirting with the unintended consequences concept of it. (all based on climate change mitigation)

I just saw a video this morning about Germany floating the idea of banning driving on weekends. The story they were outlining was that the cars could be disabled by the government? and of course the scare tactic of "coming to the US too"

Excess production capacity + state sponsored industries?

Reading a lot these days about dumping worldwide, not only in the US. Seems more prevelant than just a few industries crying out for protectionism in their specific vertical. If a country that relies on production at its core for social stability makes more stuff than it can domestically consume the excess stuff has to go somewhere.

RMW

Similar to a few years ago, when oil was trading in the negative. Production was so high that they had to get rid of it, because more was coming. It wasn't really so much about production, but demand dropped off the scale. A guy could get rich, if he had a place to store it for a while.

 

[Packard]

I visited Menard's the other day and was looking to purchase some trim boards. I was looking specifically for cementious based products that would work with Hardie Plank siding.

In the process I stumbled upon this stuff.  [eek]

This was certainly an eye opener for me, how is it that a country that has as large of a timber harvesting industry as we have, can have some real competition from abroad. I get the Baltic birch thing...I get the rare wood thing, but simple 3/4" thick pine boards primed from China? Really?
I can't even begin to understand the economics behind this product that are needed to make it a viable business model. The first thought that jumped to mind was the Japanese motorcycle dumping in the 1980's, but that was 40 years ago and I'm sure more robust economic models are needed today...or are they? 

[attachimg=1]

Study the edges.  My experience is that primed pine is almost invariably finger-jointed small pieces, with the primer hiding that fact.

Piecing together the shorter lengths is probably labor intensive, an advantage to China with cheap labor.

I also read that primer only enhances paint adhesion when it is relatively fresh.

I painted over factory primed brick molding and the paint peeled on the molding only.  So the pre-primed boards will not save you from having to prime the boards prior to paint.

 

[Steve1]

It has been argued that US softwood prices are kept artificially high to benefit US producers.

The US commonly puts tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber entering the US. 
This has been going on for decades.
Seems that these disputes drag out for years and Canada frequently wins the case in one of the dispute resolution tribunals.
But somehow there is always a new tariff and a new legal battle.

Maybe Chinese imports haven't gotten enough penetration that there is tariffs on their lumber.

 

[Packard]

I just came from Lowes, and they are showing “factory primed and painted—ready to use” boards.  The finish is so thick that it is impossible to see the grain or if it is finger jointed.

Where damaged, the paint is flaking off in dime, nickel and quarter size flakes.  Adhesion is dreadful. 

Cambodia is just as far off as China.

I would note that geopolitics can be part of the reason for this.  A while back the company I worked for needed brass wire for a huge job.  Domestic wire was too expensive for use as it left no money left for production costs.

One of our employees was from India and he said that he “would make some phone calls”.

It turns out that in India at that time, all profits above $300,000.00 for the year were taxed at 90%.  So manufactures would hide cash in their closets (metaphorically speaking) until they found a way to avoid the 90% income tax.

However, they got to keep 100% of the profits from sales to overseas.  So the wire mill could sell us wire at below the cost to manufacture and claim a very high profit, thus allowing some of that cash hidden in closets to escape. 

So sometimes you simply do not have all the information available to understand selling practices.

 

[woodferret]

To annoy Packard, these are most likely softwood imports from Russia   China imports the majority of their softwood.  Their supply chain makes the machinery & paint stupid cheap for processing - not to mention cheaper labor.  Because there's fierce domestic competition (and previous demand due to their housing market), there's a lot of processing capacity and I'm not surprised by the spillover into the export market given that it's still profitable to do all the logistics.

Canada in 2012, used to supply over half of their softwood imports.  But in the last few years, up to 2021, Russia started to take over the green import market - they now have an export ban (from Russia) but China has been forging supply chains from the rest of the global south so I expect this to keep going.  Canada meanwhile, now primarily exports the US because that's the only profitable market given our cost

 

[Packard]

True.  I don’t knowingly purchase any products originating from Mother Russia.  Putin will one day be remembered along with Stalin and Hitler as one of the world’s nasties.

So, no Russian goods for me.