The nation’s service sector needs to transform itself to prepare for global economic changes expected after US president-elect Donald Trump takes office, the Commerce Development Research Institute (CDRI, 商業發展研究院) said on Monday.
Economic shifts during the Trump era might pose challenges to Taiwan’s service industry, but they might also present new opportunities, CDRI chairman Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財) said at a news conference in Taipei.
While expected exchange rate fluctuations could affect Taiwan’s import costs and export competitiveness, Trump’s emphasis on reducing China’s influence in supply chains presents an opportunity for Taiwan to enhance the competitiveness of its service businesses, Hsu said.
Photo: CNA
One such area of potential cooperation with the US is artificial intelligence, he said.
The uneven recovery of the economy would persist as trade and supply chains undergo global transformations, he said.
If Taiwan’s service sector does not make digital and services changes, it might result in the sector’s structural decline, he said.
Taiwan’s chronic labor shortages would not be easily solved in the short term and likely become a long-term trend, and any lack of action in addressing the issue could lead to a wave of business closings, Hsu said.
An approach of permitting more migrant workers to Taiwan would be too passive, he said, adding that a structural makeover to bring in workers is needed.
Japan not only recruits workers from abroad, but also sends one-third of its workers who did not get through training programs back to their homelands, Hsu said, adding that such a method is more “proactive.”
The issue should be discussed at the Legislative Yuan, he 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
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
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
RSS