China suspended an export ban to the US that had targeted gallium, germanium and antimony, metals crucial for modern technology, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced yesterday in a de-escalation of the trade war with Washington.
The restrictions banned the export of dual-use goods, materials that can have both civilian and military applications.
Imposed December last year, the ban is suspended until November next year, the ministry said in a statement.
Photo: AP
The announcement comes after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and US President Donald Trump met on Oct. 30 in South Korea and agreed to walk back some punitive measures imposed during their tit-for-tat tariff escalation.
At one point, duties on both sides had reached prohibitive triple-digit levels, hampering trade between the world’s two largest economies and snarling global supply chains.
Throughout the trade war, China has sought to leverage its chokehold over the critical minerals underpinning everything from smartphones to advanced military technology. Gallium, germanium and antimony are not classed as rare earth elements but are crucial for entire sectors of the economy.
China accounts for 94 percent of the world’s production of gallium — used in integrated circuits, LEDs and photovoltaic panels — according to a report by the EU published last year.
For germanium, essential for fiber optics and infrared sensors, China makes up 83 percent of production.
Antimony is used both in battery technology and by the arms industry to reinforce armor plating and ammunition.
In its brief statement, the ministry also announced the easing of restrictions on exports of graphite-related products, which had likewise been banned under the controls on dual-use goods.
These are the latest de-escalation measures taken by Beijing since the Xi-Trump meeting.
Last week, China announced that it would extend the suspension of additional tariffs on US goods for one year, keeping them at 10 percent.
The commerce ministry said it would cease applying additional tariffs imposed since March on soybeans and a number of other US agricultural products. These measures severely impacted a key source of Trump’s political support, farmers.
Trump announced at the end of last month that China had agreed to suspend the restrictions imposed on Oct. 9 on the export of rare earths technology for one year.
Rare earths are a field dominated by China and are essential for manufacturing in many areas.
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chips, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centers that are less than 30 percent complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage would be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China’s most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
RSS