US Trade Representative Katherine Tai (戴琪) is scheduled to unveil a long-awaited strategy for her country’s troubled trade relationship with China in a speech on Monday at a Washington think tank, her office said.
Tai will deliver remarks on her review of China trade policy at the Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, and participate in a session to answer questions, Tai’s office said in a statement on Thursday.
Since taking office in March, Tai has been conducting a thorough review of Washington’s China trade policy.
US President Joe Biden has kept in place tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese imports imposed by former US president Donald Trump, but his administration has so far revealed little about how it will address what it calls China’s non-market trade and subsidy practices.
Tai’s speech on Monday would mark the start of the final three months of a “Phase 1” trade deal that Trump struck with Beijing at the start of 2019, easing a tariff war between the world’s two largest economies. It called for China to increase purchases of US energy, services and manufactured goods, by US$200 billion until the end of this year, compared to 2017 levels.
Biden administration officials say that China has not met the Phase 1 terms, and the US intends to hold China to its international trade commitments.
Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, estimates that China’s purchases of US exports through August are running at about 62 percent of the Phase 1 targets, based on US data.
Tensions between the two economic powers has also grown as the US has restricted Chinese companies’ access to sensitive US technologies.
Tai has asked the US Congress for new trade law tools to counteract massive Chinese state subsidies for high-technology sectors.
The Biden administration has sought to rally US allies to join Washington in confronting what it says are abusive trade policies by Beijing. US and EU officials met on Wednesday in Pittsburgh to deepen protection of sensitive technologies and address challenges posed by “non-market economies” — a reference to China.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
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