Australian farmers and business leaders yesterday broadly welcomed a proposed free trade agreement with China but a union leader slammed the decision to start talks as based on a fiction.
The two sides on Monday night signed a memorandum of understanding during a visit by Prime Minister John Howard to Beijing, paving the way for the start of negotiations on an agreement.
The Australian Industry Group said China had already achieved a major goal even before talks start, after Australia granted it market economy status. The status is crucial for China's WTO undertakings as it will give Beijing a better basis to negotiate trade disputes.
But Australian Manufacturing Workers Union national secretary Doug Cameron said such a status was pure fiction. Cameron said Beijing controlled and intervened in every aspect of its economy and had a series of provincial non-tariff barriers to protect and promote its industries.
"Workers have no bargaining rights. The country has no human rights, poor environmental standards and a diabolical health and safety system," he said.
China represents a threat to living standards and job security worldwide, Cameron said.
The National Farmers' Federation was more upbeat, saying farmers and agricultural exporters stand to gain. Federation president Peter Corish said Australia must concentrate on gaining free access for all agricultural goods.
Australian agricultural exports to China were worth A$2.4 billion dollars (US$1.8 billion) last year, only a very small percentage of the total Chinese agricultural market.
Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Peter Hendy said a deal would put Australia in a unique position -- having free trade agreements with two of the world's major economic powerhouses, China and the US.
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
RSS