■ECONOMY
Cabinet to provide loans
Taiwan’s Cabinet plans to provide NT$900 billion (US$27.4 billion) in loans to help businesses through the economic slowdown, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday, citing Minister without Portfolio Chu Yun-peng (朱雲鵬). Under the plan, the Cabinet will first provide small and medium enterprises with NT$300 billion in loans and then start coordinating with seven state-run banks next month to offer NT$600 billion in loans to large corporations over the next two years, the report said. The Cabinet’s loan plan is part of the government’s effort to help companies obtain credit lines from banks and stave off layoffs. On Oct. 31, the Cabinet approved a short-term job-creation plan that aims to offer up to 56,000 jobs by June.
■ECONOMY
Export forecast lowered
Taiwan’s Bureau of Foreign Trade has reduced its export growth forecast for this year from 10 percent to 8 percent after exports declined in September and last month. Bureau Director-General Huang Chih-peng (黃志鵬) also said on Friday that growth next year was forecast at 8 percent, with a trade surplus of US$10 billion. Citing customs statistics, Huang said that Taiwan’s exports last month totaled US$20.81 billion, down US$1.88 billion, or 8.3 percent, from the same month last year.
■AVIATION
EVA to lead across Strait
EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空), the nation’s second-largest air carrier, will be able to fly a total of 23 charter passenger flights to China each week, along with its affiliate UNI Airways Corp (立榮航空), the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday, citing the Civil Aeronautics Administration. China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空), the nation’s largest carrier, and its subsidiary, Mandarin Airlines Ltd (華信航空), will run a total of 22 charter passenger flights to China weekly. Their smaller rival, TransAsia Airways Corp (復興航空), will operate nine weekly flights, the report said. The new flights arrangement came after Taiwan and China signed an agreement on Tuesday in Taipei that allows the number of charter passenger flights to triple from 36 to 108 per week.
■ENERGY
Chavez hails Russia venture
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez inaugurated his country’s first Venezuelan-Russian offshore natural gas project on Friday, hailing his country’s increasingly close energy cooperation with Russia as a counterweight to US imperialism. Donning hard hats, Chavez and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin mingled with workers from Venezuela’s government-controlled oil company and Russia’s state-run gas giant, Gazprom, as exploration began at a Gulf of Venezuela drilling platform. Gazprom won the contract to help develop two natural gas blocks in the gulf in 2005.
■AVIATION
Carrier, pilots ink pay pact
Singapore Airlines Ltd, the world’s largest carrier by market value, yesterday reached an agreement with pilots on pay and other benefits after a year of negotiations. The accord “forms the basis of a Points of Agreement that has been signed,” Singapore Airlines spokesman Stephen Forshaw said in an e-mailed statement that called the wage negotiations “challenging.” Singapore Airlines on Thursday reported that quarterly profit fell 36 percent, the biggest decline in more than three years to S$323.8 million (US$219 million), after it paid more for jet fuel and filled fewer seats.
Semiconductor business between Taiwan and the US is a “win-win” model for both sides given the high level of complementarity, the government said yesterday responding to tariff threats from US President Donald Trump. Home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Taiwan is a key link in the global technology supply chain for companies such as Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp. Trump said on Monday he plans to impose tariffs on imported chips, pharmaceuticals and steel in an effort to get the producers to make them in the US. “Taiwan and the US semiconductor and other technology industries
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
SUBSIDIES: The nominee for commerce secretary indicated the Trump administration wants to put its stamp on the plan, but not unravel it entirely US President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency in charge of a US$52 billion semiconductor subsidy program declined to give it unqualified support, raising questions about the disbursement of funds to companies like Intel Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電). “I can’t say that I can honor something I haven’t read,” Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, said of the binding CHIPS and Science Act awards in a confirmation hearing on Wednesday. “To the extent monies have been disbursed, I would commit to rigorously enforcing documents that have been signed by those companies to make sure we get
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