■ TRADE
US in `banana war'
The US on Friday joined the "banana war" at the WTO, alleging the EU treats Latin American producers unfairly. US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said the US requested a WTO panel to review "whether the European Union's banana import regime breaches the EU's WTO obligations" of more than a decade ago. The US claims the EU failed to implement WTO rulings in a 1996 action initiated by Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and the US. Four-fifths of the bananas imported by the EU are grown in Latin America.
■ FOOD
China rejects US ban
China cannot accept the ban on four kinds of seafood imported from the mainland by the US and urged the matter be settled as soon as possible, Xinhua reported yesterday. The US Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday it would not allow imports of Chinese farm-raised seafood unless suppliers could prove the shipments contained no harmful residue. There might be isolated cases of Chinese enterprises exporting products with quality problems, Xinhua quoted Li Changjiang (李長江), director of the State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, as saying. However, the ban of all exports of such products is "unacceptable," Li said.
■ ENERGY
Formosa plans new plant
Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), the nation's biggest diversified industrial company, plans to build a polysilicon plant in Taiwan to tap rising demand for solar energy. Formosa Plastics is in talks with Renewable Energy Corp ASA of Norway, MEMC Electronic Materials Inc of the US and Japan's Tokuyama Corp to develop technology to produce the material, Lee Chih-tsuen (李志村), a member of the group's executive committee, said on Friday. Renewable Energy, MEMC and Tokuyama produce polysilicon used to make semiconductors and solar cells.
■ FINANCE
Huijin folded into agency
Central Huijin Investment Co (中央匯金), the Chinese government's investment arm, will be folded into the new agency created to manage part of the nation's US$1.2 trillion in foreign reserves, a central bank official said. The new State Investment Co will assume the responsibilities of Beijing-based Central Huijin, which holds controlling stakes on behalf of the government in the nation's three-biggest state-owned banks, Wu Xiaoling (吳曉靈), deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, said in Shanghai yesterday. The Ministry of Finance won approval from lawmakers yesterday to issue 1.55 trillion (US$200 billion) of bonds to buy a portion of China's foreign-exchange reserves and inject the funds into the State Investment Co.
■ COMPUTERS
SanDisk, Ritek suit settled
SanDisk Corp, the world's largest maker of flash-memory cards, and Ritek Corp (錸德) settled a patent dispute and agreed to license each other's technology. Terms of the settlement and agreement are confidential, Milpitas, California-based SanDisk said in a statement. SanDisk sued Taiwan-based Ritek and its distributors Memorex Products Inc and Pretec Electronics Corp in 2001, saying they infringed a patent for memory cells. Flash memory stores data whether a device is on or off and is used in digital cameras and MP3 players.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts