■ELECTRONICS
Hon Hai to relocate staff
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) plans to relocate 160,000 China-based workers from coastal Shenzhen to inner cities so as to benefit from preferential taxes offered by provincial governments, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday. Hon Hai, the world’s largest contract maker of electronics, may spend NT$10 billion (US$302.8 million) to facilitate the business relocation, the report said. The company’s 260,000 employees at the Shenzhen plant would also be cut to 100,000 while the remaining employees would be relocated to new plants in Wuhan, Huaibei Province, and Jincheng, Shanxi Province. Company spokesman Edmund Ding (丁祈安) was quoted as saying that these inner cities have offered Hon Hai not only preferential business income taxes, lower than the 25 percent rate in other coastal cities, but also preferential access to public utilities, the report said.
■CHINA
Foreign debt increases
China’s foreign debt increased by more than 18 percent in the first nine months of the year, with short-term debt rising especially fast, state media reported yesterday. At the end of September, overseas borrowing stood at US$442 billion, a rise of 18.3 percent from the end of last year, Xinhua news agency said, quoting the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. It did not offer an explanation for the rise. Short-term debt — defined as loans with maturities of less than one year — had risen particularly fast, increasing by 27.2 percent over the nine-month period to US$280 billion, Xinhua reported. Medium to long-term debt was up by a more moderate 5.5 percent to US$162 billion, Xinhua reported.
■AUTOMAKERS
Beijing to stimulate sales
China plans to offer incentives for car owners to scrap their old models in favor of new ones in a bid to lift the auto industry as it enters a period of crisis, state media said yesterday. The measure is part of a new package being prepared in Beijing aimed at avoiding a US-style collapse of the local auto sector, Xinhua news agency reported. “Details of the plan will be announced very soon,” an unnamed official with the commerce ministry said shortly after dismal figures were released showing that Chinese auto sales fell 14.6 percent last month from a year earlier. Other measures that China may adopt to bolster auto sales include cuts in the 10 percent vehicle purchase tax and easier access to car loans, Xinhua said.
■AIRPORTS
Hong Kong staff strike
Baggage handlers at Hong Kong’s international airport launched a three-hour strike yesterday to protest the cancelation of their merit bonus, a labor organizer said. The workers, along with freight handlers, tarmac workers and airport bus drivers, started the strike at 1pm after talks with Hong Kong Airport Services Ltd broke down, organizer Ip Wai-ming (葉偉明) told reporters. Local television news showed approximately 100 workers on strike gathered near cargo carts at the airport. Ip said the workers make between HK$6,000 to HK$8,000 (US$770 to US$1,030) a month and that the bonus, which usually amounts to a month’s pay, is crucial to their livelihoods. He said management at Hong Kong Airport Services refused to resume the full bonus pay, but offered a one-time additional payment of HK$750 to each employee. “This is quite far from what we demanded,” Ip said.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
RSS