Global News Of Note: OECD Releases Report On Metals And Decarbonization

What happens abroad impacts MSCI members in North America. Here is the latest economic, trade, and other policy news of note for the last week:

• The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has concluded removing government support for aluminum smelting and steelmaking could be a cost-effective strategy for decarbonization. Specifically, removing this aid would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by one percent while cutting global output by only 0.3 percent. These results, the OECD said, would be driven by China and India, which account for 96 percent and 89 percent of the emissions and output reductions, respectively. Please note: Connecting the Dots is reporting on this study for MSCI members’ information only. MSCI has not endorsed or made any statement regarding the OECD’s conclusions.
• China’s primary aluminum output rose 5.3 percent from September 2022 to September 2023, said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Output totaled 30.81 million tons in the first nine months of 2023, up 3.3 percent from the same period in 2022. Read more here.
• As Reuters reported, NBS also revealed China’s crude steel output fell by five percent from August 2023 to September 2023 and was down 5.6 percent year-over-year. China manufactured 82.11 million metric tons of crude steel in September, a number that was far below the 95 million tons analysts predicted for the NBS reading. Production for the first nine months of 2023 was up 1.7 percent from the same period in 2022, however.