The Ministry of Finance has launched anti-dumping investigations into steel products from China and South Korea sold on the local market, to protect the interests of Taiwanese firms.
The ministry yesterday said that the products being looked at by anti-dumping investigations are cold-rolled, flat-rolled non-oriented electrical steel products, which are used mainly in items such as motors, transformers, voltage regulators and electromagnetic switches.
The ministry said China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼), the nation’s biggest steelmaker, filed a petition requesting an investigation into alleged unfair trading practices by suppliers from the two countries.
Photo: AFP
There is reasonable suspicion that the imported goods in question constitute dumping and harm the local industry, the ministry said, adding that the steel imports in question have increased significantly since 2023.
The market share of those imports has increased year by year, and their prices last year started to fall below market prices, with the price gap continuing to widen, the ministry said.
Taiwanese firms were forced to lower their prices in response, but those were not enough to offset the impact of the goods in question, it said, adding that local firms were losing customers and seeing significant declines in production, capacity utilization, sales and profitability.
The finance ministry said it would also notify the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the investigation, as the latter is in charge of finding out how much harm the products have caused to the domestic industry within 40 days.
If the economic affairs ministry determines that local industry has been harmed, the finance ministry should within 70 days make a preliminary decision on whether to impose provisional anti-dumping tariffs. The preliminary decision is expected to come as early as mid-April next year.
Companies being investigated for dumping include South Korea’s POSCO Holding Inc, seven Chinese companies — such as Baoshan Iron & Steel Co (寶山鋼鐵), Wuhan Iron & Steel Corp (武漢鋼鐵) and Beijing Shougang Co (北京首鋼) — as well as several steel importers in Taiwan, the finance ministry said.
The finance ministry in March announced it would maintain anti-dumping duties of 38.11 percent and 37.65 percent on cold-rolled stainless steel from China and South Korea for five years respectively, effective until March 17, 2030.
Micron Memory Taiwan Co (台灣美光), a subsidiary of US memorychip maker Micron Technology Inc, has been granted a NT$4.7 billion (US$149.5 million) subsidy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs A+ Corporate Innovation and R&D Enhancement program, the ministry said yesterday. The US memorychip maker’s program aims to back the development of high-performance and high-bandwidth memory chips with a total budget of NT$11.75 billion, the ministry said. Aside from the government funding, Micron is to inject the remaining investment of NT$7.06 billion as the company applied to participate the government’s Global Innovation Partnership Program to deepen technology cooperation, a ministry official told the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s leading advanced chipmaker, officially began volume production of its 2-nanometer chips in the fourth quarter of this year, according to a recent update on the company’s Web site. The low-key announcement confirms that TSMC, the go-to chipmaker for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware providers Nvidia Corp and iPhone maker Apple Inc, met its original roadmap for the next-generation technology. Production is currently centered at Fab 22 in Kaohsiung, utilizing the company’s first-generation nanosheet transistor technology. The new architecture achieves “full-node strides in performance and power consumption,” TSMC said. The company described the 2nm process as
POTENTIAL demand: Tesla’s chance of reclaiming its leadership in EVs seems uncertain, but breakthrough in full self-driving could help boost sales, an analyst said Chinese auto giant BYD Co (比亞迪) is poised to surpass Tesla Inc as the world’s biggest electric vehicle (EV) company in annual sales. The two groups are expected to soon publish their final figures for this year, and based on sales data so far this year, there is almost no chance the US company led by CEO Elon Musk would retain its leadership position. As of the end of last month, BYD, which also produces hybrid vehicles, had sold 2.07 million EVs. Tesla, for its part, had sold 1.22 million by the end of September. Tesla’s September figures included a one-time boost in
Shares in Taiwan closed at a new high yesterday, the first trading day of the new year, as contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) continued to break records amid an artificial intelligence (AI) boom, dealers said. The TAIEX closed up 386.21 points, or 1.33 percent, at 29,349.81, with turnover totaling NT$648.844 billion (US$20.65 billion). “Judging from a stronger Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, I think foreign institutional investors returned from the holidays and brought funds into the local market,” Concord Securities Co (康和證券) analyst Kerry Huang (黃志祺) said. “Foreign investors just rebuilt their positions with TSMC as their top target,
RSS