Just months ago, BHP Billiton Ltd. (ADR: BHP), Rio Tinto PLC (ADR: RTP) and Brazil”s Vale (ADR: RIO) negotiated an 86% price increase in the benchmark price of iron ore as demand for steel boomed.

“Iron ore prices should keep pace with steel prices which have fallen to the 1994 level,” Shan Shanghua, secretary in general of the China Iron and Steel Association, told Bloomberg in a phone interview. “We are asking for a big drop in iron ore prices.”

Vale, the world”s largest iron ore producer set the stage for contract negotiations earlier this year when it secured a 70% increase in the benchmark price of its ore. BHP and Rio upped the ante by using their proximity to Asia as leverage to demand benchmark price increases that ranged from 80% to 97%. The average increase in benchmark iron ore prices paid by Chinese steelmakers was 86%.

Steel demand, output, and prices have declined substantially since then, returning some leverage back to consumers.

The benchmark price, established in April, is paid only on material that meets certain specifications listed in the contract. Other material is sold at a discount to the contract price. Of course, considering the slump in steel demand that has accompanied the global economic downturn, it”s unlikely that BHP, Rio or Vale are getting anything close to their negotiated benchmark prices of about $100 per metric ton.

“It”s the reality that current contracts cannot be fulfilled,” Shan said. “Many bigger mills don”t need to import till the end of March, some even the end of May.”

But Chinese steelmakers still aren”t satisfied, and the government wants to take advantage of the opportunity to haggle down the exorbitant prices that producers squeezed out of Beijing last spring.

If Shan is serious about iron ore prices tracking those of steel, China will demand an 82% reduction in iron ore costs, according to Bloomberg. Benchmark contract iron ore fines sold by Rio Tinto, for instance, currently cost around $92.58 a metric ton. However, a return to the levels seen in 1994 would reduce that same iron to a cost of just $16.685 per metric ton.

China also wants the new contract prices to go into effect Jan. 1, 2009, rather than April.

Of course, few analysts believe that China”s demands will be met – regardless of the tepid outlook for steel demand over the next year – and that this is more likely just a case of China giving the ore producers a taste of their own medicine by playing hardball.

“It”s going to be a difficult price negotiation as miners and mills are divided in the market outlook,” Helen Lau, a Shanghai-based analyst with Daiwa Securities Group Inc. told Bloomberg. “But iron ore prices are determined by demand, not steel prices. The association”s comment is part of negotiating tactics.”

Source: China Plays Hardball with Iron Ore Producers, Seeking 82% Reduction in Price

“Is China preying on BHP Billiton (ASX: BHP)? Or is BHP preying on Rio? Who are the barracudas and who are the minnows?” asks Dan Denning of the Daily Reckoning Australia.

Steel prices are up by about 10% this year already.

First, the big fish. “With iron ore prices rising explosively,” says China’s National Development Reform Commission (NDRC), “many domestic firms are very enthusiastic about investing in overseas mines, which needs strengthened macro guidance from the country.”

Macro guidance is about what you’d expect from a nation that has methodically and with stunning success, pulled itself from centrally planned poverty to centrally planned prosperity (at least for some). But what does ‘macro guidance’ mean? GPS? RFID?

–Today’s Australian has all the intriguing details on China’s Grand Strategy towards Australia in a story titled, “Beijing takes over BHP raid plans.” The comments from the NDRC are a fascinating take on how at least some Chinese officials think capitalism works. “Globally, iron ore mines that are of high quality and easy to exploit are basically in the hands of major multinational companies. Our firms need to pay a high cost to mine iron ore resources abroad. Their exploitation risks and costs are increasing.”

–Is it really ‘exploitation’ to pay the market price for natural resources? Or is that just the language of socialism? Perhaps a crash course on free market economics is in order for the NDRC.

–Not to sound too condescending (this coming from someone who uses the royal We), but you have to wonder if there is some wishful thinking going on in Beijing. Or maybe, after having lost money in Blackstone and Bear Stearns, state backed firms are wary of buying equity chunks in public companies. Maybe they want a different arrangement.

–Either way, it is clear the Chinese have woken up to the fact that the century is theirs for the taking. But there seems to be some confusion about what rules the century is going to operate under: will it be mostly free market rules…or other rules. The market price for the resources China wants is rising. So it would prefer to not pay the market price.

–By the way, we reckon free markets are headed for a bit of a bear market. Globalisation, in the bastard form we find it (where trade isn’t really free and currencies are manipulated regularly) has produced US$114 oil, massive inflation, the worst credit crisis since 1929, food riots, and a growing popular backlash. Expect more direct government intervention and regulation in financial markets and, perhaps, resource markets. That should play right into China’s hands, actually.

–This latest line of probing rhetoric coming from China is not exactly a new line of attack. After all, the resources are there for the taking on the public markets. There’s no need to attack at all. But it does feel like an attempt to flush out Australia’s politicians and get them more involved in China’s plans for Australian resources. The government is already involved, of course, with the Takeovers panel quashing the bid by Shougang Steel and APAC resources to take a 40% stake in iron ore up-and-comer Mt. Gibson (ASX:MGX).

–Let’s put this whole affair in the context of steel and GDP. We found the chart below yesterday while preparing for a radio interview with a Canadian business show. The host wanted to know how steel companies could afford to pay a 300% increase in coking coal prices and a 75% increase in iron ore prices. We asked him to picture the chart below.

Steel and GDP, Marching Hand in Hand

Source: Mining and commodities exports, Angelia Grant,
John Hawkins and Lachlan Shaw, 2006

–The chart shows that world steel production leapt ahead of GDP growth during the two big periods of Asian industrialisation of the last 50 years, in Japan and Korea. With China now industrialising, and coming off a much lower base in steel production, a period of growth in steel production that exceeded world GDP would be quite the spectacle. It would also mean China’s consumption of base metals is just now hitting high gear.

–From an Australian perspective, what’s so flabbergasting about the chart is that both Korea and Japan have been devoted customers of the black coal from the Bowen Basin that is so well suited for coking. They’ve also been tied up for years as customers of Rio Tinto and BHP for the iron ore that comes from the Pilbara. Now you add China to the queue.

–Despite its surge to the top in terms of global steel production, China’s individual steel firms are still smaller, at least according to the latest figures from the International Iron and Steel Institute, than Japan and Korea. Nippon Steel, Posco, and JFE are all bigger producers than Baosteel. Keep in mind, however, that as recently as 2002, China was a net steel importer. It’s now a net exporter.

Source: International Iron and Steel Institute