Airbus and six European airlines have written to four EU leaders attacking the carbon tax imposed by the EU, a source said on Sunday.
Airbus, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Lufthansa, Air France, Air Berlin and Iberia have written to the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Spain to warn them about the economic consequences of the tax, the source said.
They argue it could cost them billions of US dollars in lost orders and lead to the loss of thousands of jobs.
Photo: EPA
French aerospace and defense group Safran and Germany’s MTU also put their names to the letters, to British Prime Minister David Cameron, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. All four countries helped found Airbus.
“We question the unilateral nature of this measure,” said the source, adding that they wanted talks with all those affected, within the International Civil Aviation Organization.
The initiative was first revealed late on Sunday in the Financial Times.
It comes after the head of Airbus parent company EADS said on Thursday that China had blocked purchases of Airbus planes by Chinese companies in reaction to the disputed tax.
Airbus was being subjected to retaliation measures, EADS chief executive Louis Gallois told reporters.
According to a report on the Web site of the French economic daily Les Echos, China’s decision to freeze Airbus orders could cost the European aircraft company up to US$12 billion.
In the letter to Fillon, Airbus chief executive Tom Enders said that the tax threatened more than 1,000 jobs at the heart of the business and 1,000 more in industries supplying Airbus, Les Echos reported.
On Tuesday, the head of the International Air Transport Association said that the EU tax could provoke trade wars.
However, on Friday, Denmark Climate Minister Martin Lidegaard said the EU would maintain the tax on airlines operating in its airspace as long as an international solution had not been found.
Denmark currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency.
The carbon tax imposed on airlines by the EU came into effect on Jan. 1, but carriers will begin receiving bills only next year after this year’s carbon emissions have been assessed.
More than two dozen countries, including China, Russia and the US, opposed the EU move, saying it violated international law.
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