US President Barack Obama’s administration was yesterday expected to launch a complaint against Chinese aluminum subsidies with the WTO, a person familiar with the matter said.
The complaint is likely to add to rising trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies as US president-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office next week, with pledges to cut US trade deficits with China as a top priority.
The complaint, which was to be filed by the US Trade Representative’s office, was expected to cite “artificially cheap loans” from Chinese banks and artificially low-priced inputs for Chinese aluminum makers, including electricity, coal and alumina.
It was to cite such subsidies as contributing to excess Chinese capacity and hurting US workers and companies, according to the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case had not yet been filed.
The pending complaint follows an October request for a WTO case against China’s aluminum trade practices by two US senators from Ohio, home to several US aluminum producers, and six other senators.
China has rapidly expanded its aluminum production capacity in recent years and currently produces more than half the world’s aluminum. This has driven price declines that have reduced the number of operating US aluminum smelters to five from 14 since 2008, causing the loss of 15,000 US aluminum production jobs, the senators said in October.
“When China drives down aluminum costs by cheating, Ohio workers and manufacturers pay the price,” US Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said in a statement issued late on Wednesday.
“Thousands have lost jobs because of unfairly subsidized aluminum from China that has flooded the market and led to overcapacity, and it’s past time we get tough on these violations before more American workers suffer,” Brown said.
According to the person familiar with the complaint, the US would request consultations with China to address concerns over its subsidies.
The complaint is the 16th brought against China before the WTO during the eight years of the Obama administration over issues ranging from tariffs on broiler chickens to tax rebates for small domestic aircraft and export duties on key Chinese raw materials.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day