China’s solar firms warned of a trade war yesterday, calling on the Chinese government to respond with all means to an anti-dumping complaint filed by European competitors that they said could be a fatal blow.
Ratcheting up the stakes in ongoing disputes within the industry, companies led by Germany’s SolarWorld on Wednesday asked the EU to investigate claims that Chinese firms had been selling their products below market value in Europe — the world’s biggest solar market.
SolarWorld spearheaded a similar initiative in the USs, leading the world’s largest economy in May to impose duties of about 31 percent on solar panel imports from China.
“If the EU were to follow the precedent of the US and launch an anti-dumping investigation on Chinese solar products, the Chinese solar industry would suffer a fatal blow,” Yingli Solar’s (英利) chief strategy officer Wang Yiyu (王亦逾) said.
“The investigation would also trigger a whole-scale trade war between China and the EU, which would cause huge losses to both parties,” he said at a briefing by four major Chinese solar firms — Yingli, SunTech (尚德), Trina (天合光能) and Canadian Solar (阿斯特).
Western solar companies have been at odds with their Chinese counterparts for years, alleging they receive lavish credit lines to offer modules at cheaper prices, while European players struggle to refinance.
Trade action in Europe could prompt China to return fire by taking similar measures against Western solar companies.
“We call on the Chinese government to take all necessary and resolute measures to protect the legitimate interests of the Chinese solar industry,” Wang said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by