GERMANY
Nation’s economy contracts
The nation’s first economic contraction since 2015 was led by a drop in exports and private consumption, a trend that needs to be reversed if Europe’s largest economy is to rebound before the end of the year. The 0.2 percent decline in the third quarter, matching the initial reading, has been blamed on a slump in the auto industry that the Bundesbank and government predict would be temporary. The data published yesterday showed that exports plunged 0.9 percent in the period, while private consumption fell 0.3 percent. There was strong growth in capital and construction investment.
SINGAPORE
Property market cools
The city-state’s property market cooling measures have moderated the pace of price rises and subdued transaction activity, the nation’s central bank said. That should contribute to stronger household balance sheets over the medium term. Aggressive land bids have declined after the July curbs, which should benefit the long-term stability of the property sector and encourage prudence among real-estate firms, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said in its annual financial stability review yesterday.
TRADE
Import barriers a concern
The world’s biggest economies slapped import restrictions on nearly half a trillion US dollars of trade over the past six months, the WTO said on Thursday, voicing “serious concern.” Forty new import barriers were erected by G20 states between mid-May and mid-October — six times more than during the preceding six months — impacting US$481 billion in trade, a WTO report showed. That was the highest figure recorded since the WTO started calculating the measure in 2012.
RETAILERS
US online sales increase
Nordstrom Inc and Walmart Inc saw the biggest online sales increases in the week leading up to Thanksgiving among US retailers studied by Edison Trends. Nordstrom’s Web revenue almost doubled over the period — Thursday last week to Wednesday — from a year earlier, while Walmart’s increased 67 percent. Target Corp, Macy’s Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Best Buy Inc also saw sales rise, according to Edison, an e-commerce research company that uses e-mail receipts from purchases to calculate trends.
INTERNET
Facebook to pay 100m euros
Social media giant Facebook Inc has agreed to pay more than 100 million euros (US$114 million) to end a fiscal fraud dispute, Italian tax authorities said on Thursday. The accord aims to “end the disagreement relating to tax inquiries undertaken by the financial police at the behest of the Milan prosecutor for the period 2010 to 2016,” Italy’s tax authority said in a statement. The authority added that Facebook Italy would be “making a payment of more than 100 million euros.”
CANADA
Nation lacks ‘tech clusters’
Technology talent is drawing more investment to cities such as Toronto and Montreal, but the nation could lose momentum if it does not do more to encourage industries to scale up, CBRE Ltd said. The nation lacks “tech clusters,” dense areas of activity that contain critical mass for companies, and educational and research institutions, the Toronto-based brokerage said in a report on Thursday. Toronto is the only city competitive enough to rank among powerhouses in North America, it said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
PROTECTION: The investigation, which takes aim at exporters such as Canada, Germany and Brazil, came days after Trump unveiled tariff hikes on steel and aluminum products US President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered a probe into potential tariffs on lumber imports — a move threatening to stoke trade tensions — while also pushing for a domestic supply boost. Trump signed an executive order instructing US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to begin an investigation “to determine the effects on the national security of imports of timber, lumber and their derivative products.” The study might result in new tariffs being imposed, which would pile on top of existing levies. The investigation takes aim at exporters like Canada, Germany and Brazil, with White House officials earlier accusing these economies of
Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims would make them more understandable. The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancelation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. The company provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc, ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. “When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard
PROBE CONTINUES: Those accused falsely represented that the chips would not be transferred to a person other than the authorized end users, court papers said Singapore charged three men with fraud in a case local media have linked to the movement of Nvidia’s advanced chips from the city-state to Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek (深度求索). The US is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose AI model’s performance rocked the tech world in January, has been using US chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier. The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation of 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representation, amid concerns that organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of nations such
RSS