How Congress is holding up the defense-industrial boom, China's green hydrogen push, Keynes on the politics of time &. a disaster brewing in Congo
Great links, images and reading from Chartbook Newsletter by Adam Tooze
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Hamaya Hiroshi, Takada Division Winter Maneuvers, 1939.
Born and raised in Tokyo, Hiroshi Hamaya is one of the most eminent Japanese documentary photographers of the 20th century. Working as an aeronautical photographer and a freelance contributor to magazines during the 1930s, Hamaya began his career documenting his hometown from the sky and the streets.
An assignment in 1939 gave Hamaya the opportunity to travel to the rural coast of the Sea of Japan, where he became interested in documenting the traditional customs of its people and the austere climate of the region. Over the next two decades, he recorded life in remote coastal prefectures, developing a more humanist, ethnographic approach toward photography. In the early 1950s, Hamaya settled in the seaside town of Ōiso, where he began to review his body of work and put together his first photobooks.
Later in his career, Hamaya would return to the sprawling urban labyrinth of his youth, to chronicle Tokyo’s massive demonstrations against the renewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1960. The resultant photobook, Record of Anger and Grief (1960), would become one of the most famous exemplars of Japan’s post-war visual culture of protest.
Source: Michael Hoppen Gallery.
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US political ‘chaos’ shuts Pentagon contractors out of military stocks boom
The order books of US defense contractors are plumb full:
The likes of Northrop and Lockheed have no better customer than the US government:
But that US government right now is controlled by a chaotic and factious Congress that has not passed the defense budget for 2024 and is blocking aid to Ukraine.
This is causing shares in US defense contractors to be priced surprisingly cheaply:
Shares in the biggest military contractors to the Pentagon have shed most of their gains after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago. Lockheed Martin has lost 10 per cent in the past year and RTX, formerly known as Raytheon, has declined by 9 per cent. By contrast, shares in Leonardo of Italy have jumped 91 per cent, while those of Germany’s Rheinmetall have rallied 78 per cent. … The underperformance of the US groups’ stocks comes as spending at the Pentagon, as well as the rest of the US government, is frozen at last year’s levels because Congress has yet to pass the 2024 budget. “I’ve never seen anything like this, the chaos,” said Byron Callan, managing director of research group Capital Alpha Partners. “It’s really a very chaotic environment in Washington right now.”
Lawmakers have less than a month — until March 22 — to pass the 2024 defence budget. Both congressional chambers passed a stop-gap budget that President Joe Biden is expected to sign soon in order to avoid a partial government shutdown. The Pentagon is expected to unveil its 2025 budget request this week, but under the stop-gap measures it cannot start new procurement programmes and ongoing programmes will slow down. The undersecretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force last week warned that ongoing military modernisation efforts would be harmed if Congress failed to pass a defence spending bill. “These are production rate increases, new starts — both in programmes for acquisition as well as military construction projects that we cannot start,” Army under secretary Gabe Camarillo told reporters… The US defence sector faces further questions about its prospects if Donald Trump is re-elected as president in this year’s election in November. A weaker commitment to Nato could damp American defence exports while European governments, already under pressure to spend more on defence and bolster their own capabilities, would have to ensure more of their money goes to domestic contractors. Callan said there was “still a question about the long-term growth and competitiveness of these [US] companies if Trump is re-elected”.
Source: FT
China’s leading in green hydrogen
Infrastructure development for "green" hydrogen is proceeding rapidly in China as the country aims to exploit its extensive generation capacity in renewable energy to get ahead of Western countries in production and transport. Authorities in the Inner Mongolian city of Ulanqab -- known for its expansive grasslands -- approved this January a 20.5 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) green hydrogen investment project from oil major China Petroleum & Chemical, or Sinopec. Electricity generated on-site using solar and wind power will be used to electrolyze water and produce an annual 100,000 tonnes of green hydrogen. Plans are to supply companies in Beijing, with an aim of being fully operational in June 2027. This is not Sinopec's first investment in green hydrogen. In Ordos, Inner Mongolia, it has been proceeding since 2023 with plans to build a plant that will have an annual output capacity of 30,000 tonnes and include storage and transportation functions. That June, Sinopec began operations at a plant with an annual production capacity of 20,000 tonnes in Xinjiang… Chinese companies are also making a push in the electrolysis equipment essential for producing green hydrogen. Companies including China State Shipbuilding Corp. subsidiary Peric Hydrogen Technologies and Shandong Saikesaisi Hydrogen Energy have accumulated technological capabilities and begun exports to 30-plus countries and regions… The Hydrogen Council and McKinsey expect China to be the largest single market for clean hydrogen by 2050, transporting the majority of the fuel for domestic use via pipeline… PetroChina and partners agreed in late 2022 to start building a hydrogen pipeline between Wuhai and Hohhot in Inner Mongolia. Sinopec in April 2023 began planning a 400-kilometer pipeline connecting Inner Mongolia and Beijing that will eventually be able to transport 600,000 tonnes of hydrogen a year. The central government positions hydrogen as a strategic emerging industry and plans to increase production of green hydrogen to between 100,000 and 200,000 tonnes per year by 2025.
Source: Nikkei
Ukraine’s exports to China were rising rapidly until 2022
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Rethinking Keynes
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The lessons of the warehouse capital of the USA
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Hiroshi Hamaya, Woman Planting Rice, Toyama Prefecture, 1955
Haiti on the brink
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Disaster brewing in Congo
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A Kwame Dawes poem
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Hiroshi Hamaya, The demonstration of students from 'Chronicles of Grief and Anger', 1964.