China will boost its global clothing and textile exports by as much as half while Mexico and Morocco may hold onto their market shares when quota limits expire next year, a WTO report says.
Quotas on textile and clothing exports, used by the US and EU for four decades to protect domestic producers such as Greensboro, North Carolina-based International Textile Group and France's Dollfus-Mieg & Cie SA, will be abolished next year under a WTO agreement dating from 1994.
That will mostly benefit China, already the world's biggest exporter, which sold US$42 billion worth of textile and clothing in 2002, as well as India, the report says. Changes in the spending habits of consumers, who buy more clothing more often, mean demand from countries close to US and EU markets, including Morocco and Mexico, won't decline.
"There is no doubt that India and China will increase their world market share substantially in the textiles and clothing sector," says the report by Hildegunn Kyvik Nordas, a researcher at the WTO.
The report anticipates that "China triples its market share while India's market share is quadrupled."
Once quotas end, US clothing imports from China will leap to 50 percent from 16 percent in 2002, the report says, while imports from India will jump to 15 percent from 4 percent.
"The expected surge in market share may be less than anticipated, as proximity to major markets assumes increasing economic significance" and other developing countries catch up with Chinese labor costs, the report says. "Time to market is important and increasingly so."
That means nations near their export markets "are likely to be less affected by competition from India and China."
That may not help poor producing nations that are far from industrialized markets.
Nordas's outlook is also more optimistic than some over job losses. The Washington-based National Council of Textile Organizations estimates that countries such as Mexico, Turkey and Sri Lanka will lose US$200 billion in exports to China and 30 million workers in Canada, Germany, Taiwan and elsewhere will be left jobless.
WTO members will keep recourse to protection provided they can prove that a surge in imports is undermining their own industry.
SEMICONDUCTORS: The German laser and plasma generator company will expand its local services as its specialized offerings support Taiwan’s semiconductor industries Trumpf SE + Co KG, a global leader in supplying laser technology and plasma generators used in chip production, is expanding its investments in Taiwan in an effort to deeply integrate into the global semiconductor supply chain in the pursuit of growth. The company, headquartered in Ditzingen, Germany, has invested significantly in a newly inaugurated regional technical center for plasma generators in Taoyuan, its latest expansion in Taiwan after being engaged in various industries for more than 25 years. The center, the first of its kind Trumpf built outside Germany, aims to serve customers from Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia and South Korea,
Gasoline and diesel prices at domestic fuel stations are to fall NT$0.2 per liter this week, down for a second consecutive week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to drop to NT$26.4, NT$27.9 and NT$29.9 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to fall to NT$24.8 per liter at CPC stations and NT$24.6 at Formosa pumps, they said. The price adjustments came even as international crude oil prices rose last week, as traders
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which supplies advanced chips to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday reported NT$1.046 trillion (US$33.1 billion) in revenue for last quarter, driven by constantly strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, falling in the upper end of its forecast. Based on TSMC’s financial guidance, revenue would expand about 22 percent sequentially to the range from US$32.2 billion to US$33.4 billion during the final quarter of 2024, it told investors in October last year. Last year in total, revenue jumped 31.61 percent to NT$3.81 trillion, compared with NT$2.89 trillion generated in the year before, according to
RSS