US President Donald Trump’s administration yesterday slammed China on a range of trade issues from its chronic industrial overcapacity to forced technology transfers and long-standing bans on US beef and electronic payment services.
The annual trade barriers list from the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) sets up more areas of potential irritation for the first face-to-face meeting between Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping (習近平), in Florida next week.
USTR, controlled by the White House, said that Chinese government industrial policies and financial support for industries, such as steel and aluminum, have resulted in overproduction and a flood of exports that have distorted global markets and undermined competitive companies.
“While China has begun to take steps to address steel excess capacity, these steps have been inadequate to date and even fewer efforts have been taken by China in aluminum and other sectors,” USTR said in the report.
The report said that China is also using a series of cybersecurity restrictions as part of an apparent long-term goal to replace foreign information and communications technology products and services with locally produced versions.
USTR also accused China of using a range of measures to engineer the transfer of foreign technology to local firms. It said these include denying financial or regulatory approvals to companies using foreign-owned intellectual property or that do not conduct research or manufacture products in China.
“China also reportedly conditions foreign investment approvals on technology transfer to Chinese entities, mandates adverse licensing terms on foreign IP [intellectual property] licensors, uses anti-monopoly laws to extract technology on unreasonable terms and subsidizes acquisition of foreign high technology firms to bring technology to the Chinese parent companies,” it said.
Gaps in IP rights enforcement have allowed the misappropriation of foreign IP and trade secrets, both within and outside of China.
USTR also brought up long-standing complaints about online piracy of movies, books, music, video games and software in China, as well as a ban on US beef that has been in place since 2003.
It said delays in China’s approval process for agricultural products derived from biotechnology also worsened last year, hurting US corn exports.
The USTR released the list of trade irritants in 63 countries just after senior Trump trade officials announced an executive order to study the causes of US trade deficits.
Trump was to sign executive orders yesterday aimed at identifying abuses that are causing massive US trade deficits and clamping down on non-payment of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on imports, US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said.
Ross said that currency misalignment was not the same as manipulation, and only the US Department of the Treasury could define currency manipulation.
However, he said in some cases, currencies can become misaligned from their traditional valuations unintentionally, citing the Mexican peso’s sharp decline late last year after Trump’s election.
Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Zheng Zeguang (鄭澤光) yesterday acknowledged there was a trade imbalance, but said it was mostly due to differences in the two countries’ economic structures, adding that China had a trade deficit in services.
“China does not deliberately seek a trade surplus. We also have no intention of carrying out competitive currency devaluation to stimulate exports. This is not our policy,” Zheng told a briefing about the Xi-Trump meeting.
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