The Guardian on corporate profits

The Guardian is shocked - shocked - that corporate profits have increased.

The analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission filings for 100 US corporations found net profits up by a median of 49%, and in some individual cases by as much as 111,000%. Those increases came as companies saddled customers with higher prices and all but ten executed massive stock buyback programs or bumped dividends to enrich investors.

Given that the purpose of a company is to enrich investors we find ourselves very relaxed about this, very relaxed indeed. It is competition which benefits consumers, not the capitalism part so much.

We would though argue slightly about some of the detail:

Steel Dynamics profits increased 809%. The company was “not materially affected by inflation” as higher prices “exceeded” increased supply chain costs.

Well, yes, tariffs on imported steel will have that effect upon a domestic steel producer. Tariffs are the deliberate choking off of the competition which benefits consumers after all. If this noting of the profit rise had been accompanied by The Guardian calling for abolition of the tariffs then we’d be right there with them. But it isn’t is it? We’ve the capitalists being blamed for what the government has deliberately gone out and done.

Fertilizer giant Nutrien’s profits shot up by about $1.2bn on “higher selling prices [that] more than offset higher raw material costs and lower sales volume”.

One of the things Nutrien does is make nitrogen fertilisers. The price is set globally, N. America enjoys lower natural gas prices - fracking - than the rest of the world, so a N. American nitrogen fertiliser manufacturer will enjoy super profits as a result of fracking. The solution to such excess profits is to allow fracking elsewhere - Guardian?

Concentration is particularly pronounced among commodity companies, a problem highlighted in the grain market. CPI data shows bread and cereal prices increased by 30% and 7% between 2019 and 2021’s fourth quarters, while wheat skyrocketed to an all-time high in March as war largely eliminated Ukrainian and Russian crops.

Meanwhile, four large grain producers control about 90% of the market. Among them are Archer Daniels Midland, whose profits jumped 55%, and Bunge, whose profits swung by about $280m. Three companies control 73% of the cereal market.

Those are not grain producers, farmers produce grain. They are grain traders and transporters.

There are indeed things that can be done to reduce corporate profits if that’s what is desired. The Guardian doesn’t suggest any of the useful ones - pity really.