The central bank yesterday said that Taiwan did not carry out one-sided currency intervention as the US has claimed.
The nation’s monetary policymaker released a statement after the US Department of the Treasury submitted a report on foreign exchange policies of major trading partners to the US Congress on Friday, which put Taiwan, China, South Korea, Japan and Germany on a watch list for an “enhanced analysis” of the nations’ practices.
The US Treasury has listed three criteria to monitor unfair trade advantages against the US, of which Taiwan met two, according to the report.
The report said that Taiwan “engaged in persistent net foreign currency purchases through most of last year.”
“In light of Taiwan’s large current account surplus, such interventions are concerning,” the report said.
The report said that as of the end of last year, Taiwan has spent 2.4 percent of its GDP on net foreign exchange purchases, surpassing the US Treasury’s criterion of 2 percent.
The figure “is an estimate” of the US Treasury only, the central bank said in its statement.
The report also said that “[Taiwanese] authorities should limit foreign exchange interventions to the exceptional circumstances of disorderly market conditions, as well as increase the transparency of reserve holdings and foreign exchange market intervention.”
The US Treasury also said that Taiwan has a material current account surplus of 14.6 percent of GDP, exceeding 3 percent of its criterion.
Taiwan’s bilateral goods trade surplus with the US stood at US$14.9 billion last year, falling short of the US Treasury’s threshold, according to the report.
However, the US Treasury’s figure greatly exceeded last year’s US$5.3 billion trade surplus based on Ministry of Finance data, the central bank said.
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
RSS