Taiwan’s business community is facing a sink-or-swim situation and must seek inclusion in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement for survival, Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團) vice chairwoman Susan Wang (王瑞華) said on Saturday.
Wang, who was part of a delegation to the US led by former vice president Vincent Siew (蕭萬長), said Taiwan, which sells half of its industrial products abroad, was facing fierce competition in international markets from Japan, South Korea and China.
Most of Taiwan’s exports face tariffs of between 5 and 6 percent before they can enter other markets, which takes a toll on Taiwan businesses, blunting their competitive edge in international markets, Wang said.
South Korean exports to the EU and the US grew significantly after Seoul concluded a free-trade agreement with them, Wang said, adding that Taiwan’s exports to the two markets are not only stagnant, but shrinking.
When Siew asked her to join his delegation to lobby Washington for Taiwan’s access to the TPP, she readily agreed to participate, she said.
She said she felt obliged to help Siew with his mission because while he served as economics minister from 1990 to 1993, Siew helped the Formosa Plastics Group build its naphtha cracking plant in Mailiao (麥寮), Yunlin County.
Meanwhile, Chan Chi-hsien (詹啟賢) — chairman of Taiwan’s only human vaccine manufacturer, Adimmune Corp (國光生技) — and another business leader on Siew’s delegation said that apart from Siew, there were hardly any public figures who could organize a delegation consisting of so many business leaders and contact so many US political leaders for such a trip.
Chan said Taiwan’s biotechnology industry does not have much contact with the US, so the trip provided Taiwanese businesspeople with a valuable opportunity to develop partnerships with their US counterparts and cement a place in the international biotech industry.
Siew and his delegation of 16 Taiwanese business leaders arrived in New York on Nov. 16 for a 12-day visit, in the hope of winning US support for Taiwan’s inclusion in the TPP agreement.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure