Mexico and Turkey on Friday agreed to speed up negotiations for a free-trade agreement in the wake of protectionist threats from US President Donald Trump.
Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs Luis Videgaray and his visiting Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said the two governments have held seven rounds of talks and would meet again in the coming weeks.
“We have agreed to give a faster impetus to the search for an agreement,” Videgaray told reporters. “Today, more than ever, Mexico is open to the world and Mexico wants to build and strengthen its trade and investment ties with every country that we are friends with, regardless of geographic distance.”
Cavusoglu said Turkey wants to “intensify talks” on free trade with Mexico.
He also proposed to strengthen the MIKTA forum, a political and trade group made up of Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey and Australia.
“Together we will invest more efforts into making this forum more politically relevant, more effective and more visible,” Cavusoglu said.
The US, Canada and Mexico are preparing to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), as demanded by Trump, who said the pact a “catastrophe” for his country.
Faced with Trump’s threat to leave NAFTA if necessary, Latin America’s second-biggest economy is speeding up negotiations with the EU and seeking to tighten trade bonds with other nations.
Mercuries Life Insurance Co (三商美邦人壽) shares surged to a seven-month high this week after local media reported that E.Sun Financial Holding Co (玉山金控) had outbid CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) in the financially strained insurer’s ongoing sale process. Shares of the mid-sized life insurer climbed 5.8 percent this week to NT$6.72, extending a nearly 18 percent rally over the past month, as investors bet on the likelihood of an impending takeover. The final round of bidding closed on Thursday, marking a critical step in the 32-year-old insurer’s search for a buyer after years of struggling to meet capital adequacy requirements. Local media reports
US sports leagues rushed to get in on the multi-billion US dollar bonanza of legalized betting, but the arrest of an National Basketball Association (NBA) coach and player in two sprawling US federal investigations show the potential cost of partnering with the gambling industry. Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, a former Detroit Pistons star and an NBA Hall of Famer, was arrested for his alleged role in rigged illegal poker games that prosecutors say were tied to Mafia crime families. Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier was charged with manipulating his play for the benefit of bettors and former NBA player and
The DBS Foundation yesterday announced the launch of two flagship programs, “Silver Motion” and “Happier Caregiver, Healthier Seniors,” in partnership with CCILU Ltd, Hondao Senior Citizens’ Welfare Foundation and the Garden of Hope Foundation to help Taiwan face the challenges of a rapidly aging population. The foundation said it would invest S$4.91 million (US$3.8 million) over three years to foster inclusion and resilience in an aging society. “Aging may bring challenges, but it also brings opportunities. With many Asian markets rapidly becoming super-aged, the DBS Foundation is working with a regional ecosystem of like-minded partners across the private, public and people sectors
BREAKTHROUGH TECH: Powertech expects its fan-out PLP system to become mainstream, saying it can offer three-times greater production throughput Chip packaging service provider Powertech Technology Inc (力成科技) plans to more than double its capital expenditures next year to more than NT$40 billion (US$1.31 billion) as demand for its new panel-level packaging (PLP) technology, primarily used in chips for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, has greatly exceeded what it can supply. A significant portion of the budget, about US$1 billion, would be earmarked for fan-out PLP technology, Powertech told investors yesterday. Its heavy investment in fan-out PLP technology over the past 10 years is expected to bear fruit in 2027 after the technology enters volume production, it said, adding that the tech would