UNITED STATES
Duties slapped on PRC wire
The US on Tuesday hit Chinese exporters of steel wire with up to 253 percent duties for allegedly unfair subsidies they receive from the government. The US International Trade Administration announced a preliminary finding that Beijing was giving countervailable assistance to a number of exporters of galvanized steel wire, used in a variety of sectors, including construction and agriculture. It ordered US Customs to begin collecting deposits or bonds on Chinese imported goods ahead of a US Department of Commerce and US International Trade Commission affirmation of the ruling.
? PHILIPPINES
Economy slowed in Q2
The economy slowed in the second quarter as weakness in construction and industry offset growth in consumer spending amid a lackluster global recovery. The government’s statistical board said yesterday that the economy grew 3.4 percent in the April-to-June quarter after expanding 4.9 percent in the first quarter. The statistical board said the European debt crisis and the fragile recovery of main trading partners the US and Japan resulted in growth below its forecast of 4.5 percent to 5.5 percent. The economy boomed last year, growing 8.9 percent.
RETAIL
Tesco to sell Tokyo stores
Tesco PLC, the UK’s biggest grocer, plans to sell its business in Japan because it cannot build a large enough business in the country. Tesco has 129 small stores in the Tokyo area, the company said in a statement yesterday. Japan is the smallest of its international retail businesses, Tesco said. More than half of the stores are profitable, it said. Tesco will start a formal sale process over the coming months and the business will trade as usual in the meantime, it said.
AUTOMAKERS
Volvo, Siemens to cooperate
Sweden’s Volvo Cars says it is joining forces with Germany’s Siemens AG in the development of a new line of electric cars. Volvo, owned by China’s Geely Holding Group (吉利控股集團), said Siemens would make the electric motors that would be fitted into the Volvo C30 Electric. The deal covers the development of electrical drive technology, power electronics and charging technology. The first line of cars are scheduled to be tested by the end of this year and Volvo is expected to deliver a test series of about 200 cars to Siemens early next year.
COMPUTERS
TouchPad’s death postponed
Hewlett-Packard Co (HP) said on Tuesday it plans one last production run of the TouchPad, which has become a hot seller following a price cut and the announcement the company was killing the tablet computer. Citing disappointing sales, HP, the world’s largest personal computer maker, announced on Aug. 18 that it was ending production of the TouchPad after just seven weeks on the market.
COSMETICS
L’Oreal posts higher profits
L’Oreal said on Tuesday its first-half net profit rose 11.6 percent from a year earlier to 1.47 billion euros (US$2.11 billion) and confirmed its forecasts for the full year. Chief executive Jean-Paul Agon said in a statement that earnings improved despite the rise in raw material costs. Operating profit in the six months to June was 1.7 billion euros, with operating margins at 16.8 percent, down from 17.3 percent in the same period last year because of increased investment and advertising costs. Sales were up 5 percent to 10.15 billion euros.
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek (深度求索) is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US artificial intelligence (AI) models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News showed. In the memo, sent on Thursday to the US House of Representatives Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that DeepSeek had used so-called distillation techniques as part of “ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” The company said it had detected “new, obfuscated methods” designed to evade OpenAI’s defenses
NEW IMPORTS: Car dealer PG Union Corp said it would consider introducing US-made models such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stellantis’ RAM 1500 to Taiwan Tesla Taiwan yesterday said that it does not plan to cut its car prices in the wake of Washington and Taipei signing the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade on Thursday to eliminate tariffs on US-made cars. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan said it is planning to lower the price of its five models imported from the US after the zero tariff comes into effect. Tesla in a statement said it has no plan to adjust the prices of the US-made Model 3, Model S and Model X as tariffs are not the only factor the automaker uses to determine pricing policies. Tesla said
Australian singer Kylie Minogue says “nothing compares” to performing live, but becoming an international wine magnate in under six years has been quite a thrill for the Spinning Around star. Minogue launched her first own-label wine in 2020 in partnership with celebrity drinks expert Paul Schaafsma, starting with a basic rose but quickly expanding to include sparkling, no-alcohol and premium rose offerings. The actress and singer has since wracked up sales of around 25 million bottles, with her carefully branded products pitched at low-to mid-range prices in dozens of countries. Britain, Australia and the United States are the biggest markets. “Nothing compares to performing
AUSPICIOUS TIMING: Ostensibly looking to spike the guns of domestic rivals, ByteDance launched the upgrade to coincide with the Lunar New Year China’s ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動) has rolled out its Doubao 2.0 model, an upgrade of the country’s most widely used artificial-intelligence (AI) app, the company announced on Saturday. ByteDance is one of several Chinese firms hoping to generate overseas and domestic buzz around its new AI models during the Lunar New Year holiday, which began yesterday, when hundreds of millions of Chinese partake in family gatherings in their hometowns. The company, like rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴), was caught off-guard by DeepSeek’s (深度求索) meteoric rise to global fame during last year’s Spring Festival, when Silicon Valley and investors worldwide were
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