Amid speculation that Taiwan and Japan are close to sealing a trade pact this week, an official at the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday refused to confirm the date, but said more details would be included in the accord.
According to Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, the two countries will formally sign an investment protection pact tomorrow at the earliest when Mitsuo Ohashi, chairman of the Interchange Association, Japan, makes his first trip in his official capacity to Taiwan from tomorrow through Saturday.
A ministry official declined to confirm the newspaper report, but said the pact would be different from similar pacts between Taiwan and other countries. It would not only involve investment protection, but also include bilateral investment promotion and liberalization.
For the open market principles involved in investment liberalization, the official said both sides would propose a list of products to be eligible for national and most-favored-nation treatment.
As Tokyo cares about how Japanese investors’ rights and interests will be safeguarded, a dispute-arbitration mechanism will be listed in the pact, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Once signed, the pact is expected to bring another wave of Japanese investment to Taiwan, the official said.
The report said an open skies agreement would also be signed during Ohashi’s visit, which would liberalize bilateral commercial aviation exchanges.
Japan is the largest source of imports in Taiwan and is also the biggest investor in Taiwan, with investment capital reaching US$400 million last year.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to