An independent US trade body on Wednesday said it rejected hefty US duties on Bombardier Inc’s C-Series jets partly because Boeing Co lost no sales or revenue when Delta Air Lines Inc ordered the aircraft in 2016 from the Canadian planemaker.
The International Trade Commission (ITC) also said the 110-seat C-Series jets ordered by Delta and Boeing’s smallest 737 MAX 7 plane do not compete, adding the sale to Delta did not come at the US planemaker’s expense, as it did not offer any new aircraft to the No. 2 US carrier.
“Boeing lost no sales or revenues,” the ITC said in its 194-page ruling. “The higher standard seating capacity of the 737-700 and 737 MAX 7 limits competition between those models and the CS100 for some purchasers.”
The ITC issued the reasoning three weeks after its Jan. 26 ruling that discarded a US Commerce Department recommendation to slap a near 300 percent duty on sales of Bombardier’s 110-to-130-seat C-Series jets for five years, following a complaint by Boeing.
ITC commissioners voted 4 to 0 that Bombardier’s C-Series prices to US carriers did not harm the 737 MAX 7, thereby removing a valid reason to impose duties.
A Bombardier spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
A Boeing spokesman, which said the company is now reviewing the decision, said last month it would not consider options like an appeal before seeing the ITC’s reasoning.
Boeing has the option of appealing the decision at the Court of International Trade in New York, or a trade dispute settlement panel under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
However, in negotiations to modernize NAFTA, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has pushed to scrap NAFTA’s process to settle trade disputes, which he says is biased against the US.
The ITC decision was the latest twist in US-Canadian trade relations that have been complicated by disputes over tariffs on Canadian lumber and US milk and President Donald Trump’s desire to renegotiate or even abandon NAFTA.
Boeing alleged it was forced to discount its 737 narrow-bodies to compete with Bombardier, which it said used government subsidies to dump the C-Series during the 2016 sale.
The report, however, said that the C-Series is not likely to depress prices of US-made jets and that Bombardier is unlikely to offer other prospective buyers the same discounts provided to Delta.
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