King Rubber Extends His Sway
America Actively Enters Race for the Favor of the New Arbiter of Industry
The rise of the auto industry and tires meant by 1925, a New York Times Magazine article declared rubber the world’s new “indispensable product.”
The journalist James C. Young wrote:
Never before has modern industry placed so high a price upon an indispensable product. And never has industry needed any essential so badly as it now needs rubber.
Young went on to explain that the American demand for rubber was projected to more than double from 1924 to 1925 alone:
Americans own 18 [million] automobiles, and the number is growing rapidly. Last year the national bill for crude rubber was $175 [million]. This year it is expected to reach $425 [million]. Four-fifths of the purchased supply will go into tires.
However, the U.S. was lagging behind in production:
The United States at present controls but 3 percent of the world’s rubber production. The remaining 97 percent is in the hands of the British and the Dutch. But American enterprise is about to enter the field and promises to become one of the important future factors.
That didn’t exactly happen. Though exact modern numbers seem surprisingly difficult to come by, it appears the U.S., if anything, contributes less than 3 percent of global rubber production today.
With the demise of British and Dutch colonies over the past century, those empires certainly don’t control 97 percent of rubber production anymore, either. The top three countries today are Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam, which collectively contribute more than 60 percent of global rubber production.
In 2025, the new “indispensable product” seems to be semiconductors, thanks in no small part to the rise of AI. Congress enacted the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 to encourage domestic production. Just this week, Nvidia became the first-ever company to reach $5 trillion in market value on the basis of their semiconductor manufacturing.
Of course, rubber is still huge – and growing. Global rubber production more than doubled from 1990 to 2019:
King Rubber Extends His Sway: America Actively Enters Race for the Favor of the New Arbiter of Industry
Published: Sunday, November 1, 1925