Two representatives from the private sector who quit the government’s Tax Reform Committee in 2008 have been included in a new 16-member task force on taxation and finance, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
Chien Hsi-chieh (簡錫堦) of the Anti-Poverty Alliance and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋) of the Alliance for Fair Tax Reform were members of the third Tax Reform Committee that operated from June 2008 to December 2009, but they quit in protest against the committee’s pro-business policies.
This time, they are joining the task force to focus on the wealth gap and fair taxation issues.
The ministry will present a full list of the task force’s members to the legislature’s Finance Committee on Thursday next week. The group will hold its first meeting in the last week of this month, the ministry said in a statement.
The other 14 members of the task force include six government officials and eight academics.
Minister of Finance Christina Liu (劉憶如) will be the convener of the task force. Other government officials include Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥), Minister of the Interior Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源) and National Science Council Minister Cyrus Chu (朱敬一).
Ho Chih-chin (何志欽), who served in the administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) as finance minister, will also join the task force.
RUN IT BACK: A succesful first project working with hyperscalers to design chips encouraged MediaTek to start a second project, aiming to hit stride in 2028 MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it is engaging a second hyperscaler to help design artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators used in data centers following a similar project expected to generate revenue streams soon. The first AI accelerator project is to bring in US$1 billion revenue next year and several billion US dollars more in 2027, MediaTek chief executive officer Rick Tsai (蔡力行) told a virtual investor conference yesterday. The second AI accelerator project is expected to contribute to revenue beginning in 2028, Tsai said. MediaTek yesterday raised its revenue forecast for the global AI accelerator used
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
Artificial intelligence (AI) giant Nvidia Corp’s most advanced chips would be reserved for US companies and kept out of China and other countries, US President Donald Trump said. During an interview that aired on Sunday on CBS’ 60 Minutes program and in comments to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said only US customers should have access to the top-end Blackwell chips offered by Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization. “The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States,” he told CBS, echoing remarks made earlier to reporters as he returned to Washington