The EU threatened to impose tariffs against Iran, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates on a material used in plastic bottles, saying EU producers may be victims of subsidies and price undercutting.
The EU opened investigations into whether Iranian, Pakistani and UAE manufacturers of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) receive trade-distorting government aid and sell in the 27-nation bloc below cost. The product is also used in plastic films and fibers.
In 2007, the EU prolonged for five years anti-dumping duties on PET from India, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand and Taiwan to protect European producers including La Seda de Barcelona SA in Europe’s 3 billion euro (US$4.3 billion) market. PET users include plastic-bottle mold makers such as Resilux NV and bottlers including Coca-Cola Co.
The new investigations will determine whether EU producers of PET have suffered “injury” as a result of any unfair Iranian, Pakistani and UAE competition, the European Commission, the EU’s trade authority in Brussels, said yesterday in the Official Journal.
The EU commission can impose provisional anti-subsidy duties for four months and provisional anti-dumping levies for six months. The EU’s national governments can turn those measures into “definitive” five-year duties at the same or different rates.
The commission has nine months from the start of an investigation to decide on provisional measures.
EU governments have 13 months from the beginning of a probe to impose five-year anti-subsidy duties and 15 months to impose definitive anti-dumping measures.
In addition to imposing anti-dumping duties on PET from India, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand and Taiwan, the EU applies anti-subsidy levies on the product from India. Last month it decided to keep in place anti-dumping duties on PET from China.
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],”
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
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