Several business leaders said yesterday that the government should sign a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) with China as soon as possible to avoid the local economy from being marginalized.
Far Eastern Group (遠東集團) chairman Douglas Hsu (徐旭東) told a business breakfast meeting that tariffs were an important reason why the government should speed up the inking of such a pact with China.
Once the ASEAN Plus One comes into force next year, a free trade zone linking ASEAN and China will go into operation, which could drag down Taiwan’s textile industry — including his own Far Eastern Textile Corp (遠東紡織) — should the two sides fail to sign a CECA.
However, as many academics and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) still oppose a CECA for fear that Taiwan would become like “Hong Kong” or part of China, Hsu said the government should work harder to clarify the differences between a CECA and the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) signed between the territory and China.
“The opposition party should also carefully study what a CECA is, not politicize the issue,” Hsu said.
Morris Chang (張忠謀), chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said yesterday that as the WTO’s Doha Round talks had collapsed, a regional trade agreement was needed in today’s environment.
“The problem lies in the name — CECA — but the content of the agreement should be beneficial to both sides [of the Taiwan Strait] as it is similar to an FTA [free trade agreement],” Chang said, adding that Taipei and Beijing should arrive at a name that both sides could accept.
Chang Ping-chao (張平沼), chairman of the General Chamber of Commerce (全國商業總會), said that Taiwan could lose its export competitiveness if a CECA were not signed, because it would be hard for the nation’s exporters to sell their products to Southeast Asia if its tariffs were higher.
“This agreement has to be signed, or else Taiwan’s economy will be marginalized,” Chang said.
Theodore Huang (黃茂雄), chairman of the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (工商協進會), which organized yesterday’s breakfast gathering, said the inking of CECA was one of the options.
“In terms of the FTA issue, the key is to not let Taiwan’s exports encounter barriers,” Huang said.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS