AUSTRALIA
Canberra holds WTO case
The government is to temporarily suspend its WTO case against China over tariffs on barley, while Beijing undertakes a three-month review of the restrictions, in a potential breakthrough to the long-running dispute between the nations. Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong (黃英賢) yesterday announced the agreement alongside Minister for Trade and Tourism Don Farrell at a news conference in Adelaide, saying they were hopeful of a similar agreement for China’s tariffs on Australian wine. “We are hopeful that at the end of that review process the impediments that currently exist will be suspended or removed and that we can get back to normal trade with China,” Farrell said.
JAPAN
Buffett eyeing Japan stocks
Warren Buffett is turning his focus back to Japan as he intends to boost his investments in the country, the Nikkei reported. Shares of major trading houses — Mitsubishi Corp, Mitsui & Co, Marubeni Corp, Sumitomo Corp and Itochu Corp — yesterday rose after Buffett said he had raised Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s holdings in them to 7.4 percent from about 5 percent in 2020 and is looking to increase his exposure to Japanese stocks, the Nikkei report said. “This may encourage foreign investors to invest in Japanese stocks, especially in value stocks,” T&D Asset Management Co chief strategist Hiroshi Namioka said.
SOUTH KOREA
Regulator fines Google
The Korea Fair Trade Commission has fined Alphabet Inc’s Google 42.1 billion won (US$31.83 million) for blocking the release of mobile video games on a competitor’s platform. The commission yesterday said that Google bolstered its market dominance, and hurt local app market One Store’s revenue and value as a platform, by requiring video game makers to exclusively release their titles on Google Play in exchange for providing in-app exposure between June 2016 and April 2018. Game makers affected by Google’s action include Netmarble Corp, Nexon Co and NCSOFT Corp, as well as other smaller companies, the antitrust regulator said.
NEW ZEALAND
House sales tumble
House sales fell to a record low in the three months through December as interest-rate hikes and plunging property prices pushed buyers to the sidelines. Sales of residential and lifestyle properties fell to 13,890 in the fourth quarter last year, which was the lowest since records began in 1990, according to CoreLogic New Zealand data published yesterday by the Reserve Bank in Wellington. The volume is below the previous low of 15,579 seen during the 2008 global financial crisis. The CoreLogic data includes all settled property sales and the third-quarter sales were revised to 15,880 from 14,996 previously.
AVIATION
Airbus deliveries down 9%
Airbus SE delivered 127 jets in the first quarter, a 9 percent drop from a year earlier, as shortages of parts such as engines spilled into the new year. Deliveries totaled 61 aircraft in March, the world’s biggest maker of commercial jetliners said yesterday in a statement. The lower first-quarter tally would make it harder for Airbus to reach its goal of increasing deliveries to 720 aircraft this year. Airbus delivered 661 aircraft last year, after lowering its initial target. It handed over 140 jetliners in the first quarter of last year.
TECH BOOST: New TSMC wafer fabs in Arizona are to dramatically improve US advanced chip production, a report by market research firm TrendForce said With Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) pouring large funds into Arizona, the US is expected to see an improvement in its status to become the second-largest maker of advanced semiconductors in 2027, Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report last week. TrendForce estimates the US would account for a 21 percent share in the global advanced integrated circuit (IC) production market by 2027, sharply up from the current 9 percent, as TSMC is investing US$65 billion to build three wafer fabs in Arizona, the report said. TrendForce defined the advanced chipmaking processes as the 7-nanometer process or more
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
Who would not want a social media audience that grows without new content? During the three years she paused production of her short do-it-yourself (DIY) farmer’s lifestyle videos, Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi (李子柒), 34, has seen her YouTube subscribers increase to 20.2 million from about 14 million. While YouTube is banned in China, her fan base there — although not the size of YouTube’s MrBeast, who has 330 million subscribers — is close to 100 million across the country’s social media platforms Douyin (抖音), Sina Weibo (新浪微博) and Xiaohongshu (小紅書). When Li finally released new videos last week — ending what has
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