The Ministry of Economic Affairs made a U-turn yesterday on the imposition of anti-dumping duties on uncoated printing and writing paper from Japan and China, saying the imports did not damage the local papermaking industry.
"From market competition, growth rates of imports, imported prices, overseas producers' capacity and inventories and other factors, we found that uncoated paper imported from Japan and China does not substantially damage the local industry," the International Trade Commission said in a statement.
The result is an about turn on a preliminary report released by the commission in December last year, when it said uncoated paper imported from Japan, China and Indonesia had "substantially disrupted the local industry."
The commission's finding will be submitted to the Ministry of Finance, which is expected to accept the commission's recommendation not to impose duties.
Lin Kuang-nan (林光男), director-general of the Taiwan Paper Industry Association (台灣區造紙工業同業公會) which filed the request for a dumping investigation, said the association was very disappointed at the decision and may file an administrative lawsuit.
Since the commission started to investigate the case, importers of uncoated papers have reduced their imports from Japan and China, and because of this the statistics the commission collected were not credible, Lin said.
Imports from the destinations under investigation dropped by 28 percent in the first quarter from a year ago, he said.
The commission's ruling is an indication that the prices of textbooks may not be raised as had been expected against a backdrop of looming inflationary risk.
Several publishers, especially textbook publishers, had said previously that they may have to raise prices due to the rising cost of uncoated paper, the paper used to print textbooks, magazines and comic books.
They estimated that for every NT$1 the price of paper rises, they would need to increase the price of books by NT$4.8.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
The US Department of Commerce last week ordered multiple chip equipment companies to halt shipments of certain tools to China’s second-largest chipmaker, Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd (華虹半導體), its latest action to slow the country’s development of advanced chips, two people familiar with the matter said. The department sent letters to at least a handful of companies informing them of restrictions on tools and other materials destined for two Hua Hong facilities US officials believe make China’s most sophisticated chips, the people said. Top US chip equipment companies Lam Research Corp, Applied Materials Inc and KLA Corp, each of which has significant
RSS