ELECTRONICS
Young Fast loses NT$902m
Touchpanel maker Young Fast Optoelectronics Co (洋華光電), which counts Samsung Electronics Co as its top client, posted a bigger quarterly loss of NT$902 million (US$28.86 million) for last quarter after booking an asset loss of NT$682 million. The company lost NT$429 million in the third quarter of last year. That brought the company’s total loss last year to NT$1.81 billion, deepening from a loss of NT$1.63 billion in 2012. Young Fast posted a loss for a third straight year last year. Company chairman Albert Pai (白志強) told investors yesterday that this year would be another difficult period for the company because of an ongoing price decline. The company will continue to cut costs by streamlining its workforce.
STEEL
EU imposes tariffs
The EU has imposed tariffs as high as 25.2 percent on stainless steel from China and Taiwan to curb competition for EU producers, such as Acerinox SA and Outokumpu Oyj. The duties punish Chinese and Taiwanese exporters of cold-rolled flat products for allegedly selling them in the EU’s 5.5 billion euro (US$6 billion) market below cost, a practice known as dumping. This kind of steel is used in everything from elevators and tanks to boilers and kitchen equipment. EU producers that also include Acciai Speciali Terni SpA and Aperam suffered “material injury” as a result of dumped imports from China and Taiwan, the European Commission, the 28-nation EU’s trade authority in Brussels, said yesterday in the Official Journal. The levies, which take effect today, are for six months and may be extended for five years.
TRADE
Cross-strait talks next week
The 10th round of the cross-strait trade in goods talks will be held starting on Tuesday next week at the earliest in China, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Given that Beijing and Seoul have initiated their free-trade pact, Taiwan will work on getting more favorable tax treatments than South Korea from Beijing during the three-day talks, Vice Minister Bill Cho (卓士昭) told a press conference. Bureau of Foreign Trade Director-General Yang Jen-ni (楊珍妮) will lead Taiwan’s negotiation team, while Bejing’s team is likely to again be led by Chen Xing (陳星), head of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s Department of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau Affairs, the ministry said.
ECONOMY
Money supply increasing
The nation’s money supply increased year-on-year last month with the broad gauge advancing faster than the narrow indicator, extending the so-called “death cross,” the central bank said yesterday. The broad M2 money supply gained 6.51 percent year-on-year last month, while the narrow money supply reading of M1B rose by 6.12 percent, ending six months of slowdown, the bank said. The bank dismissed concerns of a possible liquidity crunch, citing net foreign fund inflows for the past two months.
SMARTPHONES
Apple leads Taiwan’s market
Apple Inc led Taiwan’s smartphone market in sales volume and sales value, and had the best-selling single model for the fifth consecutive month last month, according to statistics released yesterday by industry sources. A total of 771,000 smartphones were sold in Taiwan last month, down 3.4 percent from a month earlier, the figures showed.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
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