Hopes that Taiwan could sign a free-trade agreement (FTA) with the US could dim after the US elects a new senate and president in November, but the two sides could still explore cooperation opportunities in the energy market, the head of the most powerful business group involved in Taiwan trade said yesterday.
Paul Wolfowitz, who took the helm of the US-Taiwan Business Council in May, told a luncheon in Taipei that he supported stronger ties between the two sides, but expressed doubt there would be progress in the FTA talks after the general elections in the US.
“There isn’t much progress about the matter and the picture may turn bleaker as the next congress is likely to be less sympathetic,” said Wolfowitz, former deputy secretary of defense in the George W. Bush administration.
The US will elect a new president and congress members in November, with pundits predicting that the ruling Republican Party will lose seats in congress.
Wolfowitz said he saw opportunities for bilateral cooperation in exploring the energy market.
The two sides could join forces and explore the solar energy sector, which will become critical over the coming years, he said.
He said he admired the new Taiwanese government for improving cross-strait ties and expressed hope that investment deregulation would be extended to the technology sector.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
The US Department of Commerce last week ordered multiple chip equipment companies to halt shipments of certain tools to China’s second-largest chipmaker, Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd (華虹半導體), its latest action to slow the country’s development of advanced chips, two people familiar with the matter said. The department sent letters to at least a handful of companies informing them of restrictions on tools and other materials destined for two Hua Hong facilities US officials believe make China’s most sophisticated chips, the people said. Top US chip equipment companies Lam Research Corp, Applied Materials Inc and KLA Corp, each of which has significant
RSS