China’s latest attempt to lower runaway commodity prices, this time for thermal coal, is likely to follow a familiar pattern of initial success followed by failure. So far this year, Beijing has acted to cool prices for metals such as copper, aluminium, zinc and iron ore, and for energy products such as crude oil and now coal. Each intervention has met with some success at first, but over time prices have reverted to their prior upward trends. The exception is when the fundamentals of supply and demand actually change, as it did for iron ore, which dropped sharply from its record high after China actually cut steel production, and supply of the raw material recovered after disruptions in top exporters Australia and Brazil. Beijing’s […]