Berlin yesterday angrily protested after the US said it would slap punitive “anti-dumping” duties on steel plate products from companies in Germany and seven other nations.
Germany said the EU should consider filing a complaint with the WTO in what threatened to turn into a major trade row under US President Donald Trump, who has promised protectionist measures to put “America First.”
German Minister for Foreign Affairs Sigmar Gabriel said the step breached global trade rules and unfairly disadvantaged suppliers in Germany, as well as in Taiwan, Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, Japan and South Korea.
He said that deliberately violating WTO rules “is a dangerous step” and that “Europeans cannot accept this.”
He said he had noted “with utter incomprehension” the decision by the US Department of Commerce on imports of carbon and alloy steel plate products that impacts German companies Salzgitter AG and Dillinger Huette.
“Despite our efforts and repeated interventions by the European Union, the US Commerce Department has applied calculation methods that contravene WTO rules with the aim of harming US competitors in the steel industry,” he said.
US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, formerly on the board of steel and mining giant ArcelorMittal SA, on Thursday said that the foreign producers were selling their products at unfairly low prices in the US market and that US customs could therefore impose duties on the imports.
The materials are used in a range of sectors from construction, infrastructure and mining to ships, railway cars and machines.
The US move is “significant because it is the first anti-dumping procedure in the steel sector under the new administration,” Gabriel said.
“The US government is apparently prepared to provide American companies with unfair competitive advantages against European and other companies, even if this is contrary to international commercial law,” he said.
“The EU must now examine whether it will file a complaint with the WTO. I strongly support this,” he said.
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