Among 25 new-member applicants to the WTO, Taiwan plans to conduct bilateral talks with seven countries, asking them to open their markets to Taiwan, an official at the Board of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Economic Affairs confirmed yesterday.
"The seven countries -- Vietnam, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Cambodia and Laos -- have a relatively higher trade volume with Taiwan than the other applicants," the official surnamed Wu said yesterday.
Having been a WTO member for over one year, Taiwan is now entitled to hold consultations with new WTO applicants before they finalize their membership application to the trade body. Taiwan itself had to cut separate deals with WTO members in working-group talks for over 15 years before it was finally awarded the membership last January in tandem with China's WTO accession.
Taiwan will review their tax and tariff policies and the openness of their service sector, asking for preferential tariffs on imports to benefit Taiwanese exporters or boost Taiwanese investment there, Wu said.
Among the seven countries, Vietnam has gradually become a popular investment location for Taiwanese, with growing trade ties between the two countries.
Since Vietnam has promised member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to lower some of its tariffs to below 5 percent in 2004, Taiwan will ask for the same preferential treatment, said another foreign trade official surnamed Wang, who is in charge of preparations for bilateral talks with Asian countries.
Wang said that the government wants to strike deals with Cambodia and Laos to create a better investment environment for Taiwanese manufacturers.
"In line with the Cabinet's go-south policy, traditional manufacturers may be able to reduce business risks by diversifying their outbound investments," Wang said.
Taiwan attended the 16th round of working group talks with Russia in December, said another foreign trade official surnamed Lin, who is in charge of preparations for bilateral talks with East European countries.
Lin said that Taiwan hopes that Russia can provide tax-free treatment on imports of information-technology products from Taiwan, which Russia seems happy to facilitate since it plans to sign the WTOs Information Technology Agreement.
In accordance with the agreement, its current 56 participants enjoy tax-free treatment on IT imports.
Taiwan also hopes that Russia will eliminate taxes on agricultural products from Taiwan, he said.
Taiwan is running a trade deficit with Russia because local manufacturers and processors purchase large amounts of raw materials, such as wood and pig iron, from Russia.
All WTO bilateral issues require many rounds of negotiations, so no immediate results are expected, foreign trade officials said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to