EU trade ministers yesterday said that they must not be “naive” in the face of alleged Chinese price dumping as they try to agree on tougher measures to fight unfairly low prices.
“Europe cannot be naive and must protect its interests, especially when it comes to dumping,” Slovakian Minister of Trade Peter Ziga said.
The 28 ministers meeting in Brussels were looking to agree on a new method to assess whether Chinese exporters are unfairly flooding the European market with their products.
Within the EU, the tougher proposals have been rejected by free-trade purists such as Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands, which fear a move toward protectionism and angering China.
Steelmakers are especially keen for the changes after being battered by a collapse in prices due to China-led oversupply and a wave of cheap imports.
Steelworkers protested in Brussels on Wednesday, demanding that the EU pass the rules.
“Whether we can reach an agreement today [yesterday] or not, I don’t really know, but it is in the process. If not today, I see it quite soon,” EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem said as she arrived for the talks.
These extra defenses are key as China next month is widely expected to receive the official WTO designation of Market Economy Status (MES).
This new standing means that China’s trade partners would no longer be allowed to use alternative methods to measure potential price dumping, handing much more power in trade fights to Beijing.
To counter this, the European Commission’s proposal introduces several criteria to assess trade partners, such as state policies and influence, the widespread presence of state-owned companies and the independence of the financial sector.
Beijing on Thursday said the EU’s tougher proposals were wrong, leaving China as a “surrogate country” in the eyes of the WTO.
“These new measures have no basis in World Trade Organization rules,” Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman Shen Danyang (沈丹陽) said, adding that the EU was illegally stripping China of its WTO rights.
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) latest smartphones carry a version of the advanced made-in-China processor it revealed last year, results from an independent analysis showed. This underscored the Chinese company’s ability to sustain production of the controversial chip. The Pura 70 series unveiled last week sports the Kirin 9010 processor, research firm TechInsights found during a teardown of the device. This is a newer version of the Kirin 9000s, made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) for the Mate 60 Pro, which had alarmed officials in Washington who thought a 7-nanometer chip was beyond China’s capabilities. Huawei has enjoyed a resurgence since
purpose: Tesla’s CEO sought to meet senior Chinese officials to discuss the rollout of its ‘full self-driving’ software in China and approval to transfer data they had collected Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing yesterday on an unannounced visit, where he is expected to meet senior officials to discuss the rollout of "full self-driving" (FSD) software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Chinese state media reported that he met Premier Li Qiang (李強) in Beijing, during which Li told Musk that Tesla's development in China could be regarded as a successful example of US-China economic and trade cooperation. Musk confirmed his meeting with the premier yesterday with a post on social media platform X. "Honored to meet with Premier Li