Delivering a big defeat to Boeing Co, a US trade panel on Friday ruled that the US aircraft giant was not harmed by competition from Canada’s Bombardier Inc.
The 4-0 decision by the independent International Trade Commission (ITC) effectively blocks US President Donald Trump’s administration from slapping 292 percent tariffs on Bombardier.
The US Department of Commerce last year ruled that the Canadian firm had unfairly received government subsidies and sold its C-series planes at artificially low prices in the US. The trade panel disagreed.
The case threatened to raise tensions between Washington and US allies Canada and Britain, which has a Bombardier plant in Northern Ireland.
Bombardier praised the ruling as a “victory for innovation, competition and the rule of law.”
Boeing said it was “disappointed” and vowed to continue to document the damage from “illegal subsidies and dumped pricing.”
Boeing had charged that Bombardier sold Delta Air Lines Inc 75 CS100 aircraft for less than it cost to build them, but Delta said Boeing did not even make the medium-sized jets it needed.
Delta said it was “pleased by the ITC’s ruling rejecting Boeing’s anticompetitive attempt to deny US airlines and the US traveling public access to the state-of-the-art 110-seat CS100 aircraft.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly clashed with Canada over trade, including Canadian softwood lumber imports. It has launched contentious talks to renegotiate the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico — a pact that Trump has called a job-killing disaster.
Bombardier in October last year sold a majority stake in the C Series program to Europe’s Airbus SE for no cost. The C Series headquarters was slated to stay in the Montreal area, but a second assembly line for the 100 to 150-seat plane is scheduled to be set up at Airbus’ plant in Mobile, Alabama.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last