Although the US Department of Commerce has cut anti-dumping duties against two Taiwanese SRAM makers, company officials say the positive development won't significantly affect their bottom lines.
The reason: The anti-dumping duties assessed against the two companies more than two years ago had little financial impact in the first place.
"This is a good news for us, though our business wasn't significantly affected by the taxation," said Chen Li-huan (
In 1998, the US Department of Commerce levied anti-dumping duties against Winbond, charging a 102.88 percent tax on all of the company's SRAM chips flowing into the US. On Monday, that duty was lowered to 0.6 percent.
But while the tax on Winbond's SRAM chips has been virtually eliminated, company officials say the move won't produce much benefit in the way of cost savings.
According to Chen, the anti-dumping duty applied specifically to chips, while chips that entered the US as a part of motherboards or PCs were not taxed.
Pure chip exports to the US account for just 0.6 percent of the company's production, Chen said. Furthermore, Winbond has reportedly reduced its production of SRAM since the dumping duty was imposed.
For the same reasons, officials at G-LINK Technology Corp also said a reduction in its duties from 41.74 percent to 21.74 percent wouldn't yield much material benefit.
A senior G-LINK official, who asked not to be identified, said that SRAM accounts for just 10 to 15 percent of its entire production.
While the decision by the commerce department may vindicate Winbond and G-LINK -- who had been accused by US DRAM maker Micron Technology of illegally selling SRAMs at below production cost -- the companies are eagerly awaiting a ruling by the US International Trade Commission.
If the commission finds that the companies had not dumped, they would be entitled to collect reimbursement for any duties paid.
"We hope that the commission will respond in June saying Taiwan hasn't dumped SRAMs in the US," said Rachel Huang (黃麗卿), director of the privately run Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association (台灣半導體協會).
Industry sources have speculated that the anti-dumping charges were originally brought by Micron to test the viability of another suit involving DRAM chips.
But charges of DRAM dumping were also rejected late last year by US trade officials.
Taiwan accounted for 6.1 percent of the world SRAM market last year, following the lead of Japan, South Korea and the US. For DRAM, Taiwan accounted for 14.5 percent of the global market last year.
In a related matter, the US commerce department on Monday hiked duties on SRAMs sold by Giga Semiconductor Inc (吉佳半導體), from 9.05 percent to 41.74 percent.
Cheng Tsai-wen (
Cheng said the US would remain Giga's top market, where 60 percent of all the company's SRAM chips are sold.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts