Transcript of the above video: 

This is kind of one of those videos where I am just kind of riffing off something that I saw on, in this case the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, something I saw in the news. I thought of making this video after I read a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com. Grim outlook for Thai steelmakers. Quoting directly: "Many local steel manufacturers are likely to shutter their businesses this year, succumbing to the flood of dumping from China, says the EAF Long Product Steel Producers Association."

Yeah this is not good. I watched in the United States what happened when heavy industry was effectively gutted and just pulled out of the United States and we stopped having heavy industry effectively, maybe with the exception of few key industries but for the most part, like a steel manufacturing plant, I don't even know if we have any in America at this point; we probably do but it's some kind of novel amount. 

I don't know what the solution to this problem actually is with regard to Chinese dumping but I do know that a nation needs to have a certain level of industrial capacity regardless of the market dynamics, let's put it that way. I'm not necessarily in favour of protectionism for protectionism's sake; I don't necessarily think that's a good thing, but Thailand needs to take care of her own and be able to be self-sufficient, and being able to make your own steel is a really good way of being self-sufficient. In my mind it is one of the key things you should be able to do. I mean you want food independence obviously, I think that's number one; water independence where possible. Then on top of that, if you can, you want to get at least a major portion of your energy needs to be at least self-sustaining or self-sufficient or as best you can. Again you can trade for energy; Japan has done that for years.

So again, there are nuances to all of this but I will tell you, when I was reading that article the hairs on back of my neck stood up because I was like, "Err, does Thailand really want to see her steel industry lost? I can just see a scenario where that could be very bad for this country.