China’s crackdown on exhaust-spewing factories that shut or slashed output this week at sites including steel mills, textile and cement factories and coal-fired power plants will ripple across major bulk commodity markets into 2017. City and regional governments shut thousands of plants in China’s industrial heartland, from Hebei province that surrounds Beijing to Shandong southeast of the capital, to combat smog that blanketed the country’s north for five days this week. Many plants reopened on Thursday as winds cleared the polluted air. But closures on this scale could put the brakes on China’s better-than-expected output of major commodities, hurt demand for raw materials, like iron ore and coal, clog global supply chains and get business for the world’s second-largest economy off to a subdued start in 2017. “It does present a downside risk to commodity […]