US President Donald Trump is to use the premise of a national security review of the US steel industry to demand action by G20 leaders to reduce excess capacity and other distortions in the global steel market, White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said on Thursday.
The Trump administration expects to delay the release of the hotly anticipated study until after Trump has spoken with G20 leaders at the summit in Germany next week, another administration official said on Thursday, requesting anonymity.
The official said the delay was due to July 4 holiday week scheduling issues, with “no cause or linkage” to the G20 meeting.
However, the “Section 232” review is expected to be a hot topic at the gathering in Hamburg.
The report could lead to broad new US quotas or tariffs on imported steel, and US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross previously said he hoped to reveal its findings by the end of last month.
“The premise of that report we will use as an opportunity to talk with many of our trading partners around the world about what’s going on in steel,” Cohn said on Thursday.
The study invokes a Cold War-era trade law that allows the president to restrict imports of goods deemed critical to national defense.
The administration official declined to provide details on the findings of the study, which the department aims to use as a catalyst to help reduce excess global production capacity, particularly in China.
However, US companies that consume steel have been “vigorously” lobbying Trump administration officials against major new tariffs on foreign steel that would raise prices of the key raw material, a lobbyist with clients on both sides of the debate said.
He compared the anti-tariff push to efforts by corporate CEOs in April to stop Trump from withdrawing from the North American Free Trade Agreement, with many calling the White House to try to persuade the president to change his mind.
Russia requested a discussion on the US steel 232 investigation at the WTO Council for Trade in Goods meeting yesterday, signaling that any new import restrictions could face challenges from WTO members.
Russia is a significant steel exporter to the US.
Ross has said he believes there is a “genuine” national security concern over the steel industry’s health and one possible remedy is to impose import quotas on certain products coupled with tariffs on any amounts that exceed the quotas.
Ross told a German economic conference that such measures might have to be “broad-scale,” but would be aimed at provoking a collective solution to deal with global steel excess capacity.
Cohn told the news briefing on Thursday that Trump would engage in discussions with G20 counterparts about promoting “free and fair trade,” including taking concrete action to solve the excess capacity problems in the steel sector.
Cohn said that the Trump administration “will act to ensure a level playing field for all.”
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