UNITED STATES
Steel tariffs to be eased
The government is to ease tariffs on steel imported from Japan, officials announced on Monday, in the latest move by the administration of President Joe Biden to resolve trade disputes started under former president Donald Trump. Beginning in April, Japan would be allowed to pay lower duties on exports to the US of up to 1.25 million tonnes of steel per year. The decision ends the 25 percent levies Trump imposed in June 2018 on metal imports from the nation and others. However, levies of 10 percent on Japan’s aluminum exports are to remain.
JAPAN
Household spending rises
Household spending edged up in December last year, capping a solid quarter for consumers and adding to signs the economy rebounded during a lull in COVID-19 infections at the end of last year. Bigger outlays on housing, transportation and education pushed up overall spending by 0.1 percent from November, the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported yesterday. Spending rose 4.6 percent in the fourth quarter, compared with the prior three months when tanking consumption caused an economic recovery to go into reverse. The data also showed household spending remained slightly below the prior year’s already weak level.
ENERGY
BP back in the black
BP PLC returned to profit last year as oil and gas prices surged following a huge loss the prior year when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the British company said yesterday. BP posted a net profit of US$7.6 billion, compared with a loss after tax of US$20.3 billion in 2020, the company said in a statement. Group revenue ballooned 49 percent last year to US$157.7 billion, it said. The company also announced plans to accelerate its target to reduce operational carbon emissions. BP said it would return US$4.15 billion to shareholders via a share buyback thanks to surplus cash flow.
AUTOMAKERS
Nissan raises forecast
Nissan Motor Co yesterday raised its annual net profit forecast on strong interim results. The Japanese firm now expects annual net profit to March next year of ￥205 billion (US$1.78 billion), having already tripled its annual profit outlook in November last year to ￥180 billion. The company reported a net profit of ￥201.3 billion for April to December last year, compared with a net loss of ￥367.7 billion in the same period the previous year. It also posted a year-on-year increase in revenue during the nine-month period, boosted by favorable market conditions in the US and improvement in the “quality of sales in each market,” Nissan said.
TOURISM
TUI reports big loss
The world’s largest tourism operator, TUI AG, reported another big loss in the fourth quarter of last year, but passenger numbers recovered significantly from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the German group said yesterday. TUI expects traveler numbers to sit at the lower end of its bracket of “60 to 80 percent of pre-pandemic capacities” for the European winter season. Looking forward, the group sees a “very strong booking dynamic for summer 2022.” The group lost 384.3 million euros (US$438.4 million) between October and December last year, but more than halved its net loss from the same period the previous year.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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