China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼) chairman Wong Chao-tung (翁朝棟) yesterday said that the company would delay announcing prices for domestic steel for delivery next quarter until March 2, after the US decides whether to impose higher tarrifs on US$200 billion in Chinese goods.
Negotiations between the US and China need to reach to a successful conclusion by the end of March 1 to stave off a tariff hike of 10 to 25 percent against Chinese goods, the US Trade Representative’s Office said last month.
The decision to delay the announcement, a first for the company, has the support of local suppliers, Wong told a media gathering in Taichung.
“Businesses would be able to make better decisions after the latest round of high-level talks between Washington and Beijing comes to a conclusion,” he said.
China Steel strives to cater to the needs of it local customers and its prices need to reflect current market conditions, he said.
Separately, China Steel executive vice president Wang Shyi-chin (王錫欽) said that the government’s decision to cut the feed-in tariff for offshore wind energy by 12.7 percent to NT$5.106 (US$0.17) per unit for the next 20 years would harm efforts to boost the local content of the projects.
Once the projects are deemed unviable from an investment standpoint, scalebacks by foreign developers could result in the loss of orders for local companies that are building a whole new offshore wind energy industry from the ground up, Wang said.
China Steel, a major supplier and stakeholder in offshore wind and marine structure endeavors, said that visible orders from Orsted A/S alone would be able to sustain its fledgling operations in the field for at least two years.
Orsted on Sunday informed its local supply chain that it was halting execution of contracts after it failed to clinch a contract at last year’s rate.
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