Foreign-brand automakers with US plants do not support the US President Donald Trump administration’s rules to raise the amount of local content in North American-made vehicles, a group representing companies, including Toyota Motor Corp, Volkswagen AG and Hyundai Motor Co has, told key US lawmakers.
Talks between Mexican Minister of Economy Ildefonso Guajardo and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer were due to resume yesterday in Washington to try to resolve remaining bilateral issues so that Canada, which has been sidelined for weeks from the negotiations, can return to the bargaining table.
The automakers’ position was stated in a previously unreported letter on Thursday last week from their “Here for America” group to top trade-focused members of the US Congress.
Photo: Bloomberg
The letter could raise resistance to a revamped North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) from US lawmakers in southern states, where foreign manufacturers have built vehicle plants.
“We remain concerned that, without further clarifications, assurances and modifications, many of those companies producing vehicles in multiple states will not be in a position to support legislation implementing a NAFTA 2.0,” the group said in the letter, signed by Association of Global Automakers president John Bozzella.
Automotive experts have said that some foreign-brand automakers with smaller North American manufacturing footprints, and fewer US research and development staff might have difficulty meeting the more stringent content requirements for years.
The group said that its members, which also include Honda Motor Co, Daimler AG, BMW AG, Nissan Motor Co, Kia Motors Corp, Subaru Corp and Volvo Cars Corp, a unit of China’s Geely Automobile Holdings (吉利汽車), account for nearly half of US vehicle production.
At the same time, the American Automotive Policy Council, which represents Detroit’s Big Three automakers is “encouraged by the direction of the discussions,” said Matt Blunt, who heads the trade group.
“We share the administration’s overall goals of strengthening US auto manufacturing and creating jobs, and given the importance of NAFTA to US industry we urge the negotiators to quickly complete the negotiations,” added Blunt, whose group represents General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (FCA).
The US and Mexico are closing in on a bilateral deal on cars that would raise the requirement for North American content in regionally made vehicles to at least 70 percent from 62.5 percent.
The deal is expected to require that about 40 percent of the value come from high-wage locations paying at least US$16 an hour, meaning the US and Canada, a Mexican source close to the talks told reporters.
US Trade Representative officials have been meeting with individual automakers to secure support for potential changes, according to auto industry sources.
Trump, who launched the renegotiation of the 1994 pact a year ago, has said he wants the reworked deal to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, particularly in autos and auto parts.
Other key unresolved issues include the phase-in time for the new automotive rules to take effect and whether the US demand for a “sunset” clause that forces a renegotiation every five years is adopted, making long-term investment decisions more difficult.
The letter from the ad-hoc “Here for America” group also raised concerns that national security tariffs on autos, auto parts, steel and aluminum would undermine the benefit of a NAFTA agreement.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the