The US Department of Commerce on Friday set preliminary anti-dumping duty rates on products from Taiwan, China, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) it said were being sold in the US at unfairly low prices.
The department said Taiwanese and Chinese companies were dumping certain optical brightening agents used in laundry detergent, paper and cosmetics.
It set preliminary duty rates of 12.03 percent on the Taiwanese products and 106.22 to 141.08 percent on the Chinese.
The ruling was a victory for North Carolina-based Clariant Corp, which asked for relief -earlier this year.
Imports of the brightening agents totaled US$18.9 million from Taiwan and US$38.9 million from China last year.
The department also said companies in China and Mexico were dumping galvanized steel wire and companies in the UAE were dumping steel nails.
It set preliminary duty rates of 76.34 to 235 percent on steel wire from China and 37.87 to 61.54 percent on steel wire from Mexico.
A group of US wire companies from several states — Davis Wire Corp, Johnstown Wire Technologies Inc, Mid-South Wire Company Inc, National Standard LLC and Oklahoma Steel & Wire Company Inc — asked for duties.
The US imported US$53.9 million of steel wire from China last year and US$59.6 million from Mexico.
The department set preliminary duty rates of 19.23 to 61.54 percent on steel nails from the UAE.
Missouri-based Mid Continent Nail Corporation brought the case. Last year, the UAE exported more than US$101.5 million worth of steel nails to the US.
The department will announce its final anti-dumping duty calculations in the three cases in March.
Until then, producers and exporters from the four countries will have to post bonds or cash deposits equal to the preliminary duty rates.
The US International Trade Commission will have to give its approval for final duties to go into force. That vote is set for April.
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