UNITED STATES
Borrowing hits new high
Americans borrowed more in April to attend college and buy cars and were a little less cautious with their credit cards than the previous month. The US Federal Reserve said on Friday that consumer borrowing rose US$11.1 billion in April from March to a seasonally adjusted US$2.82 trillion. That was the 20th straight monthly gain and another record level. Nearly all of the gain came from a category that includes auto and student loans, which increased by US$10.4 billion. A measure of credit card use rose US$682 million. While that was only a modest gain, it follows a decline of US$906 million for the category in March. Greater borrowing could help boost consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of economic activity.
CANADA
Harper to promote EU trade
Montreal on Friday poured cold water on widespread speculation that a Canada-EU free-trade deal would be announced when the prime minister travels to Europe next week. “We’re actually trying to sign the most comprehensive trade agreement that Canada has ever signed ... and we’re not there,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s communications director, Andrew MacDougall, told a media briefing. Harper is scheduled to visit London, Paris and Dublin between Tuesday and June 17 to promote trade and investment, and underscore the importance of concluding a deal between Canada and the 27-nation EU. Negotiations started in 2009 with the expectation they would be concluded by late last year, but they became deadlocked over a few holdout issues, mainly in agriculture.
ECONOMY
G20 speaks out on stimulus
The G20 is intensifying its debate on how to withdraw the fiscal and monetary stimulus measures that developed nations have used to counter economic recession, Russia said on Friday. So-called “spillover effects” from expansive policies have also risen to the top of the agenda, Russian Minister of Finance Sergei Storchak said on Friday, after G20 finance talks held against a backdrop of sharply increased global market volatility. “The theme of exit strategies has returned,” Storchak told reporters after deputy finance ministers and central bankers met in St Petersburg, Russia. “This theme was raised in the context that countries’ policies should be in line with the expectations of market participants,” Storchak said. Russia’s turn at the helm of the Group of 20 has coincided with an attempt by Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe to shake the world’s third-largest economy out of a two-decade-old deflationary slump with expansive fiscal and monetary policies.
TUNISIA
IMF allows US$1.74bn loan
The IMF on Friday approved a two-year, US$1.74 billion standby loan to support the government as it implements economic reforms. The funds are to be used to shore up the country’s defenses against external and internal shocks while it pushes ahead to strengthen the banking system, fix government finances and boost jobs and incomes, the IMF said. “Tunisia has embarked on a moderate economic recovery while facing a challenging international economic environment and pursuing a political transition,” IMF deputy managing director Nemat Shafik said in a statement.
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
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
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