Reading: Chapter 5 of "Junkyard Planet"

Author: Adam Minter 

1. While India and China are both rapidly industrializing counties with a large demand for resources, a large majority of US scrap metal goes to China.  This is because of the amount of exports that China sends to the west coast of the United States and the idea of backhaul.  Trade is extremely imbalanced between China and the United States, we hardly export goods to China but we import a lot from them.  Therefore manufactured goods flow heavily in one direction, from China to the US, and lightly going the opposite direction.  Shipping companies don't want to send empty ships back to China so in order to accomplish this they offer discounts to companies such as scraping companies that generate millions of pounds of product a year and has customers in China.  The US doesn't import nearly as much from India, therefore the trade imbalance is not there and shipping countries don't offer as high of discounts to scrapping companies trying to export their goods to India. 

2. A specific section of the reading says "All of this globalized scrap, every last hunk, moves according to who wants it most, and who can ship it most cheaply." While this is important in the creation of globalization, it can have negative aspects.  The imbalances in trade and trade markets can create a lot of inequalities in the world.  For example in Brass City, Jamnagar, brass manufacturers want to get scrapping material from the US but because shipping costs are so much higher in comparison to China, they can't tap into the market.  This leads to lower wages for employees which lowers the standard of living and furthers inequality.  

3. More generally speaking, modern transportation has been significantly influenced by history.  By relating this reading with Jared Diamond's themes in "Why Did Human History Unfold Differently On Different Continents For The Last 13,000 Years?"  Historically, settlers moved to areas on or near the ocean because ports provided good economic benefits.  Large ports were mainly created on the east side of the US because of the proximity to Europe and settlers first arrived on the east side.  However as the world developed, and China became a chief exporter, ports on the east side of our country were too far flung.  The Panama Canal was created to evolve with the changing world.