UNITED STATES
President said to plan tax
President Barack Obama is to propose a minimum tax of 19 percent on foreign earnings and a 14 percent tax on stockpiled offshore profits as part of a US$3.99 trillion budget designed to help the lower and middle classes by increasing levies on the nation’s wealthiest citizens, according to two people speaking on condition of anonymity. Obama wants to use new revenue to pay for infrastructure projects in the US and these two provisions, along with the extension of certain laws that are set to expire, would yield US$565 billion over 10 years, according to one of the people.
MACROECONOMICS
Brazil posts budget deficit
Brazil on Friday posted its first budget deficit in 12 years — more bad news for an economy already battling high inflation and facing deep spending cuts. Brazil’s central Bank released data showing a public sector primary deficit equal to 0.63 percent of GDP last year. It marks the first time that the figure has been in the red since 2002, when its central bank began keeping statistics, and shows a sharp decline even from the previous year, when GDP growth was 1.88 percent.
AUTOMAKERS
Second air bag fix needed
More than 2 million Toyota, Chrysler and Honda vehicles are being recalled for a second fix for faulty air bags that might inadvertently inflate while the car is running. The recall includes some Acura MDX, Dodge Viper, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Honda Odyssey, Pontiac Vibe, Toyota Corolla and Toyota Avalon models made from 2002 to 2004. The US’ National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says all of the vehicles covered in Saturday’s announcement had already been under a recall for the faulty air bags, but the automakers’ original attempts to fix the defects only worked about 85 percent of the time.
FOOD INUSTRY
Sugar traders merge
Cargill Inc’s decision to partner its sugar business with Brazil’s Copersucar SA is to be followed by more mergers among sugar traders after four years of falling prices, Kingsman SA founder Jonathan Kingsman said. Sugar prices decreased almost 12 percent last year, the fourth annual decline and capping the longest slump since at least 1962. Noble Group Ltd, Asia’s biggest commodity trader by revenue, sold a majority stake in its food division to China’s Cofco Corp (中國糧油集團) last year. “In five years time there will be fewer traders,” Kingsman said on Saturday in an interview at the Platts Kingsman sugar conference in Dubai. “You’ll see a lot new people coming in.”
STOCKS
Spotify IPO faces delay
Spotify Ltd, the online and mobile music service, is working with Goldman Sachs Group Inc on a new round of private financing that might push back the timing of an initial offering (IPO), people with knowledge of the matter said. The Stockholm-based music streaming Web site is seeking to raise about US$500 million, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. Spotify worked with Goldman Sachs, also an investor in the company, last year on raising a credit facility, a move that might presage an initial public offering in the US, people familiar with the situation said at the time. Banks often pitch loans to early-stage technology companies with an eye toward an underwriting role down the road, the people then said.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
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