The US Department of Commerce on Tuesday said that it had opened investigations into vehicle tire imports from Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam to determine whether they were being sold below fair value.
The department said it was also investigating whether tire producers in Vietnam were receiving unfair subsidies for passenger vehicle and light truck (PVLT) tires.
The investigations were in response to petitions filed last month by the United Steelworkers (USW) representing workers at US tire plants.
SHRINKING MARKET
“Even though demand for PVLT tires increased, domestic producers were still forced to grapple with reduced market share, falling profits and lost jobs,” USW International president Tom Conway said earlier.
The US imported almost US$4 billion in tires from the four nations, including nearly US$2 billion from Thailand and US$1.2 billion from South Korea last year.
The USW said tire imports from the four countries have risen nearly 20 percent since 2017, reaching 85.3 million tires.
The department said the alleged dumping margins range from 21 percent to 116 percent for Taiwan; 43 percent to 195 percent for South Korea; 106 percent to 217.5 percent for Thailand; and 5 percent to 22 percent for Vietnam.
The USW represents workers at Michelin Group, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co, Cooper Tire & Rubber Co, Sumitomo Corp and Yokohama Rubber Co plants in Ohio, Arkansas, North Carolina, Kansas, Indiana, Virginia New York and Alabama.
‘ROBUST GROWTH’
This month, Hankook Tires Co urged the department not to investigate, saying the US domestic tire industry “is in robust health and growing.”
It said in a filing that domestic vehicle tire producers “as a whole have not been materially injured and are not threatened with material injury by reason of subject imports.”
The Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade told the department that its economy is “heavily dependent on light vehicles and passenger cars for transportation, logistics and travel and the PVLT tire industry is crucial for our continued economic advancement.”
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Taiwan has enough crude oil reserves for more than 100 days and sufficient natural gas reserves for more than 11 days, both above the regulatory safety requirement, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, adding that the government would prioritize domestic price stability as conflicts in the Middle East continue. Overall, energy supply for this month is secure, and the government is continuing efforts to ensure sufficient supply for next month, Kung told reporters after meeting with representatives from business groups at the ministry in Taipei. The ministry has been holding daily cross-ministry meetings at the Executive Yuan to ensure
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
RSS