Tag: International Trade and World Market

Businesses Brace for Currency Chaos in Asia

Chin@Strategy

Tigun Wibisana and Sandra Kok, who own the SiTigun cafe on Penang Island in Malaysia, are facing an excruciating decision that could make or break their business of 14 years: Can they increase prices to cover rising expenses without driving customers into the arms of their bigger rivals? The cost of the coffee beans that the couple, who are married, buy is spiraling because they are traded globally in U.S. dollars, and the Malaysian ringgit has fallen to a 24-year low. Compound that with an inflationary spike in prices for…

US Penalizes Chinese Companies for Aiding Iran’s Oil Exports

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced on Thursday that it would impose sanctions on two Chinese companies that transport and store Iranian oil, a shift to a tougher stance on Tehran amid signs that efforts to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal have failed. In a statement, the State Department said the United States was targeting Zhonggu Storage and Transportation Co. Ltd., which it said operates a commercial crude oil storage facility for Iranian petroleum, and WS Shipping Co. Ltd., which it said manages a vessel that has transported Iranian…

Europe Plans to Ban Goods Made With Forced Labor

Chin@Strategy

The European proposal would make the national authorities of the bloc’s 27 members responsible for enforcing the ban. But critics say that failing to identify the regions or industries that are the biggest culprits, as well as leaving individual nations to determine how to implement the policy, stood out as major weaknesses. In the United States, the authorities are empowered to seize goods suspected of being the products of forced labor coming from Xinjiang. But in Europe, the authorities have to prove that the goods are in breach of the…

How Silicon Chips Rule the World

Chin@Strategy

When I first arrived in Taiwan as a college student in the summer of 1973, there was no ambiguity whatsoever about the American role on the island. Over the previous two years, President Richard M. Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, had opened relations with the People’s Republic of China in Beijing. But a short distance away in Taiwan, which the People’s Republic considers a breakaway province, U.S. Air Force jets soared overhead. There was a U.S. base right in Taipei, within walking distance of my favorite bookstore.…

India’s Electric Vehicle Push Is Riding on Mopeds and Rickshaws

Chin@Strategy

In the United States, luxury-car buyers are snapping up Teslas and other electric cars that cost more than $60,000, and even relatively cheap models cost more than $25,000. Here in India, those are all out of reach of the vast majority of families, whose median income is just $2,400. But an electric vehicle movement is taking place nonetheless, not on four wheels, but on two and three. Electric mopeds and three-wheeled rickshaw taxis that sell for as little as $1,000 are zipping along India’s congested urban thoroughfares, cheered on by…

Of Dictators and Trade Surpluses

Chin@Strategy

According to a new NBC News poll, U.S. voters now consider “threats to democracy” the most important issue facing the nation, which is both disturbing and a welcome sign that people are paying attention. It’s also worth noting that this isn’t just an American issue. Democracy is eroding worldwide; according to the latest survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit, there are now 59 fully authoritarian regimes out there, home to 37 percent of the world’s population. Of these 59 regimes, however, only two — China and Russia — are powerful…

U.S. to Begin Formal Trade Talks With Taiwan

Chin@Strategy

The Biden administration said on Wednesday that it would begin formal trade negotiations with Taiwan this fall, after several weeks of rising tensions over the island democracy that China claims as its own. The announcement marks a step toward a pact that would deepen economic and technological ties between the United States and Taiwan, after initial talks were announced in June. But relations between the United States and China have markedly deteriorated since then, on the heels of visits by two delegations of U.S. lawmakers to Taiwan this month, including…

China’s Options for Punishing Taiwan Economically are Limited

Chin@Strategy

In retaliation for Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last week, China conducted large-scale military exercises around the self-governing island democracy and suspended some trade between the sides. The exercises led to a few shipping disruptions, but they did not affect traffic at Taiwanese or Chinese ports, analysts say. And the trade bans were notable mainly for what they did not target: Taiwan’s increasingly powerful semiconductor industry, a crucial supplier to Chinese manufacturers. The bans that Beijing did impose — on exports of its natural sand to Taiwan, and on…

Biden Administration Begins Trade Dialogue With Taiwan

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Wednesday said that it would pursue negotiations to strengthen trade and technology ties with Taiwan, a move that is aimed at countering China’s influence in the Asia-Pacific region and one that is likely to rankle Beijing. The announcement follows the Biden administration’s efforts to build an Asia-Pacific economic bloc, known as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, that includes 13 countries and excludes Taiwan. China claims the island, a self-governing democracy that is critical to global technology supply chains, as an incontestable part of its territory.…

China Is Not the Biggest Threat to the World Order. It’s Russia.

Chin@Strategy

In a speech on Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed the long-awaited outlines of the Biden administration’s official posture toward China. Rather than Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Mr. Blinken said, it is China that represents the most potent and determined threat to the American-championed world order. Only China, he continued, has “both the intent to reshape the international order” and the power to do so, he said. The United States will seek to rally coalitions of other nations to meet Beijing’s challenge. The writing had been on the wall. Just…