The US, the EU and Canada would file complaints with the World Trade Organization over China's tariffs for the import of foreign auto-parts, US and EU officials said yesterday.
The auto-parts dispute, which marks the first time the Western allies have teamed up to seek a formal WTO investigation in a trade spat with China, will be included as an agenda item at a meeting of the organization's dispute settlement body on Sept. 28, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because no formal announcement had been made.
Brussels and Washington have said China could be breaking trade rules by applying the same tariff for finished cars to the import of spare parts that make up 60 percent or more of the value of the final vehicle.
This discourages automakers from using imported car parts for the vehicles they assemble in China and creates an incentive for car parts companies to shift production to China, they said in March when they requested formal consultations with the Asian country.
Officials have said that China refused to change its protectionist policy on the auto-parts in those negotiations, which Canada joined later, leaving litigation at the global trade body as a last recourse.
The WTO investigation could result in punitive tariffs being imposed on Beijing.
China's trade boom has caused friction as the country's surplus widens with its major partners.
The US trade deficit with China soared to US$202 billion last year, the highest record ever with a single country. The EU also has a "sizable and widening" trade deficit with China that reached US$128 billion last year.
Car production in China has grown rapidly in recent years and it is now second only to the US. However, manufacturers have to source 40 percent of spare parts by value in China to avoid the tax.
Beijing has claimed the tariffs are intended to stop whole cars being imported in large chunks to avoid higher tariff rates for finished cars, but the EU and the US said China had promised not to treat parts as whole cars when it joined the WTO.
European carmakers have between 20 percent and 25 percent of the car production market in China.
The US exported about US$540 million of auto-parts to China last year, a market worth US$19 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported this week. The EU's auto-parts exports to China are worth US$3.8 billion.
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained