Taiwan is likely to purchase rare earths from the US in the future, and is also in talks with Australia and Canada to strengthen global rare earth supply chain security, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday.
Taiwan and the US last month concluded the sixth Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue, during which both sides signed a joint statement endorsing the principles of the Pax Silica Declaration, pledging to deepen cooperation in areas including critical minerals.
At the time, Kung said the two sides would establish working groups to advance cooperation in areas including artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, critical materials and drone supply.
Photo: Reuters
As Taiwan lacks domestic sources of critical minerals, cooperation with Washington is aimed at securing stable supplies, he said yesterday, adding that Taiwan would soon send officials from the Geological Survey and Mining Management Agency to the US to assess rare earth resources and explore potential cooperation.
The rare earth supply chain can broadly be divided into three stages — mining, initial separation and refining — and Taiwan’s international cooperation would focus mainly on mining and initial separation, Kung said.
The materials would then be shipped back to Taiwan for further refining, which would be handled in Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) laboratories, he said.
The ministry previously estimated annual domestic rare earth demand at about 1,500 tonnes, and expects the ITRI refining capabilities to supply about one-third of that amount, he said.
However, based on latest assessments and stronger economic activity, demand could rise to about 2,000 tonnes by 2030, prompting the ministry to raise its target to meeting half of that need domestically, he said.
Thanks to the ITRI’s refining capabilities, the US has also expressed interest in Taiwan’s refining techniques, he added.
Kung also addressed the issue of vehicle tariffs, saying that based on the ministry’s latest assessment, Taiwan cutting tariffs on US vehicles to zero would reduce the domestic auto industry’s production value by 1.94 percent, or about NT$4 billion (US$127.1 million).
The tariff change is expected to affect European and Japanese luxury imports rather than locally made cars, which account for 51 percent, or about 210,000 vehicles, of the domestic market, he said.
Kung said locally made vehicles are of export potential, citing Kuozui Motors Ltd (國瑞汽車), which has long produced vehicles for Toyota Motor Corp for shipments to the Middle East and other markets.
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Property transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities plunged last month, as a lengthy Lunar New Year holiday combined with ongoing credit tightening dampened housing market activity, data compiled by local land administration offices released on Monday showed. The six cities recorded a total of 10,480 property transfers last month, down 42.5 percent from January and marking the second-lowest monthly level on record, the data showed. “The sharp drop largely reflected seasonal factors and tighter credit conditions,” Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday fell in February this year, reducing
New vehicle sales in Taiwan plunged about 37 percent sequentially last month as the long Lunar New Year holiday and 228 Peace Memorial Day holiday cut short the number of working days, along with the lingering uncertainty over import tax cuts on US vehicles, market researcher U-Car said in a report yesterday. New car sales last month totaled 22,043, slumping from 35,073 units in January and down 19.89 percent from 37,515 in February last year, U-Car data showed. Sales of imported luxury cars, led by Mercedes-Benz, plummeted about 45 percent to 3,109 units last month from 5,663 units in the previous month,
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
RSS