The US accused Chinese companies of dumping televisions on the US market and slapped stiff duties on the products in the latest flare-up in trade tension between the two economic giants.
The US Commerce Department ruled on Monday that televisions from four Chinese firms were being sold in the US at less than fair value and announced provisional anti-dumping duties of 28 percent to 46 percent on the sets.
The ruling follows a US decision last week to limit imports of some Chinese textiles and added to tension between the world's biggest and fifth biggest trading nations, fanning fears in Asia that the US was growing more protectionist.
US television makers and unions complained that imports from China and Malaysia had mushroomed to 2.65 million sets a year last year from 210,000 two years earlier. No ruling was made on Malaysian televisions.
"Dumping can seriously injure or destroy an entire industry," Tom Hopson, the president of Tennessee television maker Five Rivers Electronic Innovations, said in a statement.
"US workers lose jobs when employers are forced to compete with unfair imports, which pressure US manufacturers to lower prices in what is typically a futile attempt to maintain market share," he said.
Booming Chinese factories have become important suppliers to major US retailers such as Wal-Mart, boosting the US trade deficit with China to a record US$103 billion last year.
US officials have pushed China to increase the value of its yuan, to take pressure off US manufacturers who blame Chinese competition for the loss of millions of jobs.
Some analysts say they expect a series of trade skirmishes with China ahead of US elections late next year. President George W. Bush's re-election bid could be determined by a clutch of manufacturing states.
Other US industries -- including iron pipe and bedroom furniture makers -- have also sought protection under anti-dumping laws.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS