European farmers on Thursday welcomed a landmark agreement between the EU and Japan on a free-trade pact which is to remove tariffs on much of their bilateral trade and might triple agricultural exports.
European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said the deal could boost exports by 20 billion euros (US$22.8 billion) annually and create thousands of jobs in the EU.
“We are basically tearing down all customs duties immediately on some cheeses like Gouda and cheddar, and on wine, and there will also be elimination of tariffs for other things that have been very expensive to buy from Japan, but also very expensive to export to Japan — shoes, clothes, leather, wood products, etc,” she told reporters.
Producers and exporters of meat and dairy, as well as wines and other specialty foods — categories which are currently highly protected in Japan — will see the biggest windfall from the tariff reductions, EU farm lobby Copa-Cogeca said in a statement.
“It is good news for EU producers that this ambitious trade deal has been wrapped up,” Copa-Cogeca President Martin Merrild said.
Teruyuki Daino, president of Kirin Holdings Co’s wine business, Mercian Corp, said he welcomed the potential expansion of the Japanese wine market, but added he was concerned over the impact on smaller Japanese wineries.
Megmilk Snow Brand Co Ltd, which currently shares market dominance with only two other manufacturers in Japan, said it was preparing for a large impact on the domestic dairy industry.
The Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA) said it hoped the removal of tariffs on Japanese cars, motorbikes and car parts would pave the way for a bigger deal.
“We see this agreement as an opportunity to further negotiations over the RCEP [Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership] and pick up discussions over the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership], as we would like to see a further advancement of global free trade,” JAMA and Nissan Motor Co chairman Hiroto Saikawa said.
The Japanese Business Council in Europe, which represents the interests of about 80 multinationals of Japanese parentage operating in Europe, said the next step should be digital cooperation.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained