China is to impose anti-dumping duties on EU pork for five years, but at lower rates than temporary levies in place since September, Beijing announced yesterday.
The two sides have been locked in a trade spat fueled by what many European countries view as an unbalanced economic relationship with China.
The levies come after a probe launched by China last year concluded that European pork imports “were being dumped, and the domestic industry suffered substantial damages” as a result, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in a statement.
Photo: Reuters
The duties would range from 4.9 percent to 19.8 percent — down from temporary levies of 15.6 percent to 62.4 percent — and would be applied from today, it said.
“At present, the domestic industry is facing difficulties, and there are strong calls for protection,” a commerce ministry spokesperson said, adding that the investigation’s conclusions were “objective, fair and impartial.”
The two are key trading partners, with the EU running a trade deficit of more than US$350 billion with China last year.
French President Emmanuel Macron this month said that Europe would consider adopting strong measures against China — including tariffs — if the trade imbalance was not addressed.
The trade spat erupted in summer last year when the EU moved toward imposing hefty tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, saying that Beijing’s subsidies were unfairly undercutting European competitors.
Beijing denied that claim and announced what were widely seen as retaliatory probes into imported European pork, brandy and dairy products.
China — the world’s leading consumer of pork — imported 4.3 billion yuan (US$610.2 million) of pork products from major producer Spain alone last year, official Chinese customs data showed.
Meanwhile, France exported 115,000 tonnes of pork to China last year, industry association Inaporc said.
Under the new measures, Groupe Bigard, a major French pork producer, would be charged 9.8 percent, while Danish Crown A/S would be hit with an 18.6 percent levy.
European producers criticized the imposition of temporary duties on pork in September, denying the dumping allegations.
They said that Chinese consumers pay more than Europeans for products that the latter often ignore, such as pigs’ trotters or ears.
In Italy’s storied gold-making hubs, jewelers are reworking their designs to trim gold content as they race to blunt the effect of record prices and appeal to shoppers watching their budgets. Gold prices hit a record high on Thursday, surging near US$5,600 an ounce, more than double a year ago as geopolitical concerns and jitters over trade pushed investors toward the safe-haven asset. The rally is putting undue pressure on small artisans as they face mounting demands from customers, including international brands, to produce cheaper items, from signature pieces to wedding rings, according to interviews with four independent jewelers in Italy’s main
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has talked up the benefits of a weaker yen in a campaign speech, adopting a tone at odds with her finance ministry, which has refused to rule out any options to counter excessive foreign exchange volatility. Takaichi later softened her stance, saying she did not have a preference for the yen’s direction. “People say the weak yen is bad right now, but for export industries, it’s a major opportunity,” Takaichi said on Saturday at a rally for Liberal Democratic Party candidate Daishiro Yamagiwa in Kanagawa Prefecture ahead of a snap election on Sunday. “Whether it’s selling food or
In the wake of strong global demand for AI applications, Taiwan’s export-oriented economy accelerated with the composite index of economic indicators flashing the first “red” light in December for one year, indicating the economy is in booming mode, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Moreover, the index of leading indicators, which gauges the potential state of the economy over the next six months, also moved higher in December amid growing optimism over the outlook, the NDC said. In December, the index of economic indicators rose one point from a month earlier to 38, at the lower end of the “red” light.
RSS