Following the lead of local towel manufacturers, Taiwanese shoemakers urged the government to impose anti-dumping duties on footwear imported from China under the WTO complaints mechanism.
The complaint application, which is processed by the Taiwanese government, claims the dumping margin -- the amount by which the normal value exceeds the export price of the subject merchandise -- of six categories of Chinese footwear sold in Taiwan is 283.75 percent.
The suspected dumping items are dress shoes, high-heel shoes, boots, children's shoes, sandals and casual shoes.
The application was filed jointly by two local shoemaking associations and the Tainan Leather Commercial Association (台南皮革製品商業同業公會) early this month.
"The shoemaking industry used to be a major Taiwanese exporter, but now can hardly survive after the massive influx of Chinese footwear," Huang Shao-chiu (
Taiwan lifted the ban on Chinese shoe imports on Feb. 15, 2002. According to statistics compiled by the Customs Administration and surveys conducted by the industry associations among local shoe manufacturers, the number of shoe manufacturing companies dropped from 1,500 in 2003 to 1,200 at the end of last year.
Taiwan currently imposes an import duty on the target items of 7.5 percent, but the Chinese authorities levy 22.5 percent on the same products from Taiwan, Huang said.
The overall production of local shoemakers fell from 3.9 million pairs in 2003 to an estimated 3.15 million pairs this year, the data showed.
Chinese shoe imports, however, surged from 15.97 million pairs in 2003, to about 24.42 million pairs by the end of last year, or about 80 percent of all shoe imports, the associations said.
The market share of made-in-Taiwan shoes slid from 53.76 percent in 2003 to 43.35 percent this year, while Chinese imports rose from 38.69 percent to 52.67 percent in the same period, the statistics showed.
The associations also accused importers of Chinese footwear of selling their products at below cost to expand market share.
According to the associations, the average price of imported Chinese shoes is estimated to be NT$148.42 (US$4.46) per pair this year, far lower than the average retail price of NT$629.19 per pair for local shoes.
But Jimmy Lu (
The 300 local shoemaking companies that have closed may have moved to China to achieve higher margins, not because they are losing money here, Lu said.
The EU decided early this month to continue anti-dumping duties of 16 percent on shoes from China for a two years.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is