Chinese Minister of Finance Lou Jiwei (樓繼偉) criticized Republican US presidential hopeful Donald Trump, calling him “an irrational type” due to his proposal that tariffs on imported Chinese goods be increased to up to 45 percent.
“Trump is an irrational type. If he were to do this, that would be in violation of the rules set by the World Trade Organization,” Lou said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Sunday.
Lou said that if the US put Trump’s proposal into effect, it “would not be entitled to its position as the world’s major power. The US needs to recognize that the US and China are mutually dependent on each other. Our economic cycles are intertwined.”
Photo: EPA
He acknowledged that rhetoric in a US presidential campaign can become heated.
China is the US’ largest trading partner.
Chinese officials have generally avoided criticizing Trump directly, although they have made indirect criticism of his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US and indirectly rebuffed Trump’s claims that China is stealing US jobs.
China’s tightly controlled state media has largely stuck to reporting the facts about Trump, with some notable exceptions.
Last month, influential tabloid the Global Times accused Trump of being a racist, warning that other extremists, such as former Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, had both been voted into power.
Trump on Sunday again asserted that China had waged “economic war” against the US.
“They’ve taken our jobs, they’ve taken our money,” the billionaire businessman said at a campaign rally in New York. “We can’t continue to be ripped off like we’re being ripped off.”
At a Republican presidential debate last month, Trump said China would not allow free trade or US manufacturers to compete freely.
“The 45 percent [tariff] is a threat that if they don’t behave, if they don’t follow the rules and regulations so that we can have it equal on both sides, we will tax you,” Trump said.
Republican US presidential hopeful Ted Cruz criticized the 45 percent tariff proposal, saying during the same debate that it would be passed on to US consumers.
“How does it help you to have a president come and say ... I’m going to put a 45 percent tax on diapers when you buy diapers, on automobiles when you buy automobiles, on clothing when you buy clothing. That hurts you,” Cruz said.
The US reported a US$366 billion trade deficit with China last year, up from US$343 billion in 2014 — the largest US trade imbalance with any nation. The deficit was up nearly 12 percent in the first two months of this year to US$57 billion.
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