Since 1870, there have been several formal attempts to restrict the copper output and raise, in this form, its price.
This is a list of copper cartels in the 20th century:
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The economy of Mongolia has traditionally been based on agriculture and livestock. Mongolia also has extensive mineral deposits: copper, coal, molybdenum, tin, tungsten, and gold account for a large part of industrial production. Soviet assistance, at its height one-third of Gross domestic product (GDP), disappeared almost overnight in 1990–91, in the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mongolia was driven into deep recession.
Zambia is a developing country and it achieved middle-income status in 2011. Through the first decade of the 21st century, the economy of Zambia was one of the fastest growing economies in Africa and its capital, Lusaka the fastest growing city in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Zambia's economic performance has stalled in recent years due to declining copper prices, significant fiscal deficits, and energy shortages.
A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market. Cartels are usually associations in the same sphere of business, and thus an alliance of rivals. Most jurisdictions consider it anti-competitive behavior and have outlawed such practices. Cartel behavior includes price fixing, bid rigging, and reductions in output. The doctrine in economics that analyzes cartels is cartel theory. Cartels are distinguished from other forms of collusion or anti-competitive organization such as corporate mergers.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is an intergovernmental organization of 13 countries. Founded on 14 September 1960 in Baghdad by the first five members, it has, since 1965, been headquartered in Vienna, Austria, although Austria is not an OPEC member state. As of September 2018, the 13 member countries accounted for an estimated 44 percent of global oil production and 81.5 percent of the world's proven oil reserves, giving OPEC a major influence on global oil prices that were previously determined by the so-called "Seven Sisters" grouping of multinational oil companies.
Outokumpu Oyj is a group of international companies headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, employing 10,600 employees in more than 30 countries. Outokumpu is the largest producer of stainless steel in Europe and the second largest producer in the Americas. Outokumpu also has a long history as a mining company, and still mines chromium ore in Keminmaa for use as ferrochrome in stainless steel. The largest shareholder of Outokumpu is the Government of Finland, with 26.6% ownership, including the shares controlled by Solidium, The Social Insurance Institution of Finland, Finnish State Pension Fund and Municipality Pension Agency.
Herbert Henry Dow was a Canadian-born American chemical industrialist who founded the American multinational conglomerate Dow Chemical. He was a graduate of Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, Ohio. He was a prolific inventor of chemical processes, compounds, and products, and was a successful businessman.
Scrap consists of recyclable materials, usually metals, left over from product manufacturing and consumption, such as parts of vehicles, building supplies, and surplus materials. Unlike waste, scrap has monetary value, especially recovered metals, and non-metallic materials are also recovered for recycling. Once collected, the materials are sorted into types — typically metal scrap will be crushed, shredded, and sorted using mechanical processes.
The World Copper Agreement, signed March 28, 1935, was an agreement by mining companies that attempted to create a worldwide copper cartel. The agreement formally created the International Copper Cartel. Uniting African, South American and European producers, the agreement aimed to "bring about better conditions in the production, distribution and marketing of copper throughout the world outside of the United States" through curtailment of production. To supervise the implementation of the agreement and amend breaches of it, the agreement provided for the creation of a Control Committee of 5 members.
The Intergovernmental Council of Countries Exporters of Copper (CIPEC) was created in 1967 in Lusaka with the objective of coordinating policies of the country members looking for growth in the revenues coming from copper.
Thomas Williams was a Welsh industrialist and Member of Parliament. At the time of his death, he was the richest man in Wales.
The mon was the currency of Japan from the Muromachi period in 1336 until the early Meiji period in 1870. It co-circulated with the new sen until 1891. The Kanji for mon is 文 and the character for currency was widely used in the Chinese-character cultural sphere, e.g. Chinese wén, Korean mun, Vietnamese văn. Throughout Japanese history, there were many styles of currency of many shapes, styles, designs, sizes and materials, including gold, silver, bronze, etc. Coins denominated in mon were cast in copper or iron and circulated alongside silver and gold ingots denominated in shu, bu and ryō, with 4000 mon = 16 shu = 4 bu = 1 ryō. In 1869, due to depreciation against gold, the new fixing officially was set for 1 ryō/yen = equal to 10.000 mon. The yen started to replace the old non-decimal denominations in 1870: in the 3rd quarter of 1870, the first new coins appeared, namely 5, 10, 50 sen silver and 2, 5, 10, 20 Yen. Smaller sen coins did not appear before spring, 1873. So the mon coins remained a necessity for ordinary peoples commodities and were allowed to circulate until 31st December 1891. From January 1, 1954, onward, the mon became invalid: postwar inflation had removed sen, mon etc. denominations smaller than 1 Yen. Due to the missing small coinage, the Japanese posts issued their first stamps in mon and fixed postal rates in mon until April 1872.
The varied difficulties experienced by the copper industry after the depths of the Great Depression were followed by the idea of getting relief through some form of collective action in order to reduce the intensity of competition. In this way on March, 28th, 1935, the International Copper Cartel (ICC) was formed. There were five members in the cartel and two friendly foreign observers. The voting members were: Anaconda Copper, Kennecott Copper, Roan Antelope Copper, Rhokana Corporation and the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga, while the non voting members were Bor (Yugoslavia) and Rio Tinto (Spain). Combined, these seven companies accounted for more than half of the global output of refined copper at that time. The main difference between this and the previous copper cartels is that the ICC members did not attempt to set uniform prices. Rather, they merely wanted to influence prices indirectly, smoothing out wide price fluctuations. Despite the immense profits earned by the ICC's members in the following decades, the ICC was never reproached for charging exorbitant prices, as opposed to what happened in the case of previous cartels. Indeed, in Herfindahl’s opinion the cartel did not have any significant effect on price. These are born out in USGS annual price data showing the annual average price of copper in US Dollar per pound, if one adjusts for the US Consumer Price Index.
The Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) is an intergovernmental organization currently comprising 19 Member Countries of the world's leading natural gas producers: Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela are members and Angola, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Mozambique, Malaysia, Norway, Peru and the United Arab Emirates are observers. GECF members together control over 71% of the world's natural proven gas reserves, 44% of its marketed production, 53% of the pipeline, and 57% of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports across the globe. It is headquartered in Doha, Qatar.
Bilateral relations exist between Australia and Mexico. Both nations are members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, G-20 major economies, MIKTA, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the World Trade Organization.
The Organisation of Rice Exporting Countries (OREC) describes a project of a small group of South-East Asian countries to create a homonymous organisation. The group is made up, in alphabetical order, of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. The project came to the attention of international media after remarks made publicly by Thailand's Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej on the 30th April 2008.
The mining sector in Chile is one of the pillars of Chilean economy and copper exports alone stands for more than one third of government income. Most mining in Chile is concentrated to the Norte Grande region spanning most of the Atacama Desert. Mining products of Chile includes copper, gold, silver, molybdenum, iron and coal. Chile was, in 2019, the world's largest producer of copper, iodine and rhenium, the second largest producer of lithium and molybdenum, the sixth largest producer of silver, the seventh largest producer of salt, the eighth largest producer of potash, the thirteenth producer of sulfur and the thirteenth producer of iron ore in the world. In the production of gold, between 2006 and 2017, the country produced annual quantities ranging from 35.9 tons in 2017 to 51.3 tons in 2013.
Pioneer Foods is a South African packaged goods company and in March 2020 became a subsidiary of PepsiCo. It operates in South Africa as well as two other African countries and exports a number of its brands globally. The company's core business is the production, distribution, marketing and selling of a diverse range of food, beverages and related products. The group employs approximately 8600 permanent employees.
The No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act (NOPEC) was a U.S. Congressional bill, never enacted, known as H.R. 2264 and then as part of H.R. 6074. NOPEC was designed to remove the state immunity shield and to allow the international oil cartel, OPEC, and its national oil companies to be sued under U.S. antitrust law for anti-competitive attempts to limit the world's supply of petroleum and the consequent impact on oil prices. Despite popular sentiment against OPEC, legislative proposals to limit the organization's sovereign immunity have so far been unsuccessful. "Varied forms of a NOPEC bill have been introduced some 16 times since 2000, only to be vehemently resisted by the oil industry and its allied oil interests like the American Petroleum Institute and their legion of “K” Street Lobbyists."
Orris Clemens Herfindahl was an economist who studied natural resources. However, he is mainly known as the inventor of a concentration index which he proposed in his 1950 doctoral dissertation on the steel industry while at Columbia University. In fact a similar index was proposed earlier by Albert O. Hirschman. Thus, it is usually referred to as the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index.
Qing dynasty coinage was based on a bimetallic standard of copper and silver coinage. The Manchu-led Qing dynasty was established in 1636 and ruled over China proper from 1644 until it was overthrown by the Xinhai Revolution in 1912. The Qing dynasty saw the transformation of a traditional cash coin based cast coinage monetary system into a modern currency system with machine-struck coins, while the old traditional silver ingots would slowly be replaced by silver coins based on those of the Mexican peso. After the Qing dynasty was abolished its currency was replaced by the Chinese yuan of the Republic of China.