C&EN: "More hurt for European chemical firms"

Via C&EN, this bad news (article by Alex Scott): 

The European chemical sector isn’t getting out of its slump quite yet. In fact, a number of indicators suggest that the outlook today is worse than it was at the start of the year.

German chemical executives had hoped that their country’s new government, which is set to receive parliamentary confirmation on May 6, would ease their plight. But there is “little to enthuse investors in energy-intensive German industrials,” says Sebastian Bray, Berenberg Bank’s chemical analyst, in a note to investors.

Instead, leading German companies such as BASF are likely to be casualties of the trade war launched with the tariffs announced April 2 imposed by US president Donald J. Trump. Any commitment by the new German government to cut the price of industrial power is not likely to happen before 2026, Bray states. Meanwhile, “the outlook for Q2 2025 earnings is growing more precarious.”

The UK’s leading industry body, the Chemical Industries Association (CIA), is also concerned about the impact that higher US tariffs may have on the UK chemical sector. In 2023, 23.6% of all UK chemical exports went to the US, according to the UK Office for National Statistics, and the 10% tariff that the US has imposed on most countries could stem that flow.

It will be grimly ironic if the effect of the Trump Administration's tariffs is to additionally advantage the Chinese chemical industry over the American and European ones.