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The U.S. Commerce Department said Friday it may soon scale back restrictions on Huawei Technologies after this week’s blacklisting would have made it nearly impossible for the Chinese company to service its existing customers.

The Commerce Department, which had effectively halted Huawei’s ability to buy American-made parts and components, is considering issuing a temporary general license to “prevent the interruption of existing network operations and equipment,” a spokeswoman said.

Potential beneficiaries of the license could, for example, include internet access and mobile phone service providers in thinly populated places such as Wyoming and eastern Oregon that purchased network equipment from Huawei in recent years.

Temporary license

In effect, the Commerce Department would allow Huawei to purchase U.S. goods so it can help existing customers maintain the reliability of networks and equipment, but the Chinese firm still would not be allowed to buy American parts and components to manufacture new products.

The potential rule roll back suggests changes to Huawei’s supply chain may have immediate, far-reaching and unintended consequences.

The blacklisting, officially known as placing Huawei on the Commerce Department’s entity list, was one or two efforts by the Trump administration this week allegedly made in an attempt to thwart national security risks. In an executive order, President Donald Trump also effectively barred the use of its equipment in U.S. telecom networks.

The United States believes Huawei’s smartphones and network equipment could be used by China to spy on Americans, allegations the company has repeatedly denied.

Aggressive trade talks tone

The latest Commerce move comes as China has struck a more aggressive tone in its trade war with the United States, suggesting a resumption of talks between the world’s two largest economies would be meaningless unless Washington changed course.

A spokesman for Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Out of $70 billion Huawei spent buying components in 2018, about $11 billion went to U.S. firms including Qualcomm, Intel Corp and Micron Technology Inc.

If the Commerce Department issues the license, U.S. suppliers would still need separate licenses to conduct new business with Huawei, which would be extremely difficult to obtain, the spokeswoman said.

The temporary general license would last for 90 days, she said, and would be posted in the Federal Register, just as the rule adding Huawei to the entity list will be published in the government publication Tuesday.

“The goal is to prevent collateral harm on non-Huawei entities that use their equipment,” said Washington lawyer Kevin Wolf, a former Commerce Department official.

The listing

The entity listing bans Huawei and 68 affiliates in 26 countries from buying American-made goods and technology without licenses that would likely be denied.

The entities list identifies companies believed to be involved in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.

In a final rule posted Thursday, the government tied Huawei’s entity listing to a criminal case pending against the company in Brooklyn, New York.

US indictment 

U.S. prosecutors unsealed the indictment in January accusing the company of engaging in bank fraud to obtain embargoed U.S. goods and services in Iran and to move money out of the country via the international banking system.

Huawei Chief Executive Officer Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the company’s founder, was arrested in Canada in December in connection with the indictment, a move that has led to a three-way diplomatic crisis involving the U.S., China and Canada.

Meng, who was released on bail, remains in Vancouver, and is fighting extradition. She has maintained her innocence, and Huawei has entered a plea of not guilty in New York.

Trump injected other considerations into the criminal case after Meng’s arrest when he told Reuters he would intervene if it helped close a trade deal.
…

Bogged down in a sprawling trade dispute with U.S. rival China, President Donald Trump took steps Friday to ease tensions with America’s allies: lifting import taxes on Canadian and Mexican steel and aluminum and delaying auto tariffs that would have hurt Japan and Europe. 

By removing the metals tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Trump cleared a key roadblock to a North American trade pact his team negotiated last year. As part of Friday’s arrangement, the Canadians and Mexicans agreed to scrap retaliatory tariffs they had imposed on U.S. goods, according to four sources in the U.S. and Canada who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of an announcement. 

In a joint statement, the U.S. and Canada said they would work to prevent cheap imports of steel and aluminum from entering North America. China has long been accused of flooding world markets with subsidized metal, driving down world prices and hurting U.S. producers. 

Some in Washington were urging Trump to take advantage of the truce with U.S. allies to get even tougher with China.

“China is our adversary,” said Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb. “Canada and Mexico are our friends. The president is right to increase pressure on China for their espionage, their theft of intellectual property and their hostility toward the rule of law. The president is also right to be deescalating tension with our North American allies.”

Earlier Friday, the White House said Trump was delaying for six months any decision to slap tariffs on foreign cars, a move that would have hit Japan and Europe especially hard.

Trump still is hoping to use the threat of auto tariffs to pressure Japan and the European Union into making concessions in trade talks. “If agreements are not reached within 180 days, the president will determine whether and what further action needs to be taken,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement. 

Trade weapon

In imposing the metals tariffs and threatening the ones on autos, the president was relying on a rarely used weapon in the U.S. trade war arsenal — Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 — which lets the president impose tariffs on imports if the Commerce Department deems them a threat to national security. 

But the steel and aluminum tariffs were also designed to coerce Canada and Mexico into agreeing to a rewrite of North American free trade pact. In fact, the Canadians and Mexicans did go along last year with a revamped regional trade deal that was to Trump’s liking. But the administration had refused to lift the taxes on their metals to the United States until Friday. 

The new trade deal — the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement — needs approval of the legislatures in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Several key U.S. lawmakers were threatening to reject the pact unless the tariffs were removed. And Canada had suggested it wouldn’t ratify any deal while the tariffs were still in place. 

Trump had faced a Saturday deadline to decide what to do about the auto tariffs. 

Taxing auto tariffs would mark a major escalation in Trump’s aggressive trade policies and likely would meet resistance in Congress. The United States last year imported $192 billion worth of passenger vehicles and $159 billion in auto parts. 

Legitimate use?

“I have serious questions about the legitimacy of using national security as a basis to impose tariffs on cars and car parts,” Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Friday. He’s working on legislation to scale back the president’s authority to impose national security tariffs under Section 232.

In a statement, the White House said that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has determined that imported vehicles and parts are a threat to national security. Trump deferred action on tariffs for 180 days to give negotiators time to work out deals but threatened them if talks break down. 

In justifying tariffs for national security reasons, Commerce found that the U.S. industrial base depends on technology developed by American-owned auto companies to maintain U.S. military superiority. Because of rising imports of autos and parts over the past 30 years, the market share of U.S.-owned automakers has fallen. That has caused a lag in research and development spending that is “weakening innovation and, accordingly, threatening to impair our national security,” the statement said. 

The market share of vehicles produced and sold in the U.S. by American-owned automakers, the statement said, has declined from 67% in 1985 to 22% in 2017.

But the statistics don’t match market share figures from the industry. A message was left Friday seeking an explanation of how Commerce calculated the 22%.  

In 2017, General Motors, Ford, Fiat Chrysler and Tesla combined had a 44.5% share of U.S. auto sales, according to Autodata Corp. Those figures include vehicles produced in other countries. 

It’s possible that the Commerce Department didn’t include Fiat Chrysler, which is now legally headquartered in the Netherlands but has a huge research and development operation near Detroit. It had 12% of U.S. auto sales in 2017. 

The Commerce figures also do not account for research by foreign automakers. Toyota, Hyundai-Kia, Subaru, Honda and others have significant research centers in the U.S. 
…

The United States must show sincerity if it is to hold meaningful trade talks, China said on Friday, after U.S. President Donald Trump dramatically raised

the stakes with a potentially devastating blow to Chinese tech giant Huawei.

China has yet to say whether or how it will retaliate against the latest escalation in trade tension, although state media has taken an increasingly strident tone, with the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily publishing a front-page commentary that evoked the patriotic spirit of past wars.

China’s currency slid to its weakest in almost five months, although losses were capped after sources told Reuters that the central bank would ensure the yuan did not weaken past the key 7-per-dollar level in the immediate term.

The world’s two largest economies are locked in an increasingly acrimonious trade dispute that has seen them level escalating tariffs on each other’s imports in the midst of negotiations, adding to fears about risks to global growth and knocking financial markets.

Foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang, asked about state media reports suggesting there would be no more U.S.-China trade talks, said China always encouraged resolving disputes between the two countries with dialog and consultations.

“But because of certain things the U.S. side has done during the previous China-U.S. trade consultations, we believe if there is meaning for these talks, there must be a show of sincerity,” he told a daily news briefing.

The United States should observe the principles of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit, and they must also keep their word, Lu said, without elaborating.

On Thursday, Washington put telecoms equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, one of China’s biggest and most successful companies, on a blacklist that could make it extremely difficult for the telecom giant to do business with U.S. companies.

That followed Trump’s decision on May 5 to increase tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, a major escalation after the two sides appeared to have been close to reaching a deal in negotiations to end their trade battle.

‘Wheel of destiny’

China can be expected to make preparations for a longer-term trade war with the United States, said a Chinese government official with knowledge of the situation.

“Indeed, this is an important moment, but not an existential, live-or-die moment,” the official said.

“In the short term, the trade situation between China and the United States will be severe, and there will be challenges. Neither will it be smooth in the long run. This will spur China to make adequate preparations in the long term.”

The impact of trade friction on China’s economy is “controllable,” the state planner said on Friday, pledging to take countermeasures as needed, Meng Wei, a spokeswoman for the National Development and Reform Committee (NDRC), told a media briefing.

The South China Morning Post, citing an unidentified source, reported that a senior member of China’s ruling Communist Party said the trade war with the United States could reduce China’s 2019 growth by 1 percentage point in the worst-case scenario.

Wang Yang, the fourth-most senior member of the Communist Party’s seven-member Standing Committee, the top decision-making body, told a delegation of Taiwan businessmen on Thursday that the trade war would have an impact but would not lead to any structural changes, the paper said, citing an unidentified source who was at the meeting.

One company that says it has been making preparations is Huawei’s Hisilicon unit, which purchases U.S. semiconductors for its parent.

Its president told staff in a letter on Friday that the company had been secretly developing back-up products for years in case Huawei was one day unable to obtain the advanced chips and technology it buys from the United States.

“Today, the wheel of destiny has turned and we have arrived at this extreme and dark moment, as a super-nation ruthlessly disrupts the world’s technology and industry system,” the company president said in the letter.

The letter was widely shared on Chinese social media, gaining 180 million impressions in the few hours after it was published on the Weibo microblogging site.

“Go Huawei! Our country’s people will always support you,” wrote one Weibo user after reading the letter.
…

The United States must show sincerity if it is to hold meaningful trade talks, China said on Friday, after U.S. President Donald Trump dramatically raised

the stakes with a potentially devastating blow to Chinese tech giant Huawei.

China has yet to say whether or how it will retaliate against the latest escalation in trade tension, although state media has taken an increasingly strident tone, with the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily publishing a front-page commentary that evoked the patriotic spirit of past wars.

China’s currency slid to its weakest in almost five months, although losses were capped after sources told Reuters that the central bank would ensure the yuan did not weaken past the key 7-per-dollar level in the immediate term.

The world’s two largest economies are locked in an increasingly acrimonious trade dispute that has seen them level escalating tariffs on each other’s imports in the midst of negotiations, adding to fears about risks to global growth and knocking financial markets.

Foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang, asked about state media reports suggesting there would be no more U.S.-China trade talks, said China always encouraged resolving disputes between the two countries with dialog and consultations.

“But because of certain things the U.S. side has done during the previous China-U.S. trade consultations, we believe if there is meaning for these talks, there must be a show of sincerity,” he told a daily news briefing.

The United States should observe the principles of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit, and they must also keep their word, Lu said, without elaborating.

On Thursday, Washington put telecoms equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, one of China’s biggest and most successful companies, on a blacklist that could make it extremely difficult for the telecom giant to do business with U.S. companies.

That followed Trump’s decision on May 5 to increase tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, a major escalation after the two sides appeared to have been close to reaching a deal in negotiations to end their trade battle.

‘Wheel of destiny’

China can be expected to make preparations for a longer-term trade war with the United States, said a Chinese government official with knowledge of the situation.

“Indeed, this is an important moment, but not an existential, live-or-die moment,” the official said.

“In the short term, the trade situation between China and the United States will be severe, and there will be challenges. Neither will it be smooth in the long run. This will spur China to make adequate preparations in the long term.”

The impact of trade friction on China’s economy is “controllable,” the state planner said on Friday, pledging to take countermeasures as needed, Meng Wei, a spokeswoman for the National Development and Reform Committee (NDRC), told a media briefing.

The South China Morning Post, citing an unidentified source, reported that a senior member of China’s ruling Communist Party said the trade war with the United States could reduce China’s 2019 growth by 1 percentage point in the worst-case scenario.

Wang Yang, the fourth-most senior member of the Communist Party’s seven-member Standing Committee, the top decision-making body, told a delegation of Taiwan businessmen on Thursday that the trade war would have an impact but would not lead to any structural changes, the paper said, citing an unidentified source who was at the meeting.

One company that says it has been making preparations is Huawei’s Hisilicon unit, which purchases U.S. semiconductors for its parent.

Its president told staff in a letter on Friday that the company had been secretly developing back-up products for years in case Huawei was one day unable to obtain the advanced chips and technology it buys from the United States.

“Today, the wheel of destiny has turned and we have arrived at this extreme and dark moment, as a super-nation ruthlessly disrupts the world’s technology and industry system,” the company president said in the letter.

The letter was widely shared on Chinese social media, gaining 180 million impressions in the few hours after it was published on the Weibo microblogging site.

“Go Huawei! Our country’s people will always support you,” wrote one Weibo user after reading the letter.
…

A record number of 8.34 million university graduates are set to enter the Chinese job market this summer amid escalating trade tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Observers say that as China’s export-dependent economy braces for more hits from tariff hikes, which U.S. President Donald Trump recently imposed, the country’s job markets will be tighter for everyone including fresh graduates.

And the impact of a job mismatch among college graduates has long weighed on their actual employment rate at only 52% this year, according to a recent survey.

That means more than 4 million graduates will soon join the ranks of those unemployed, although many of them may opt to pursue higher education, the survey found.

Tightening job market

“Graduate employment has always been problematic in China. Given the current situation with the trade war, I think we should expect it to be even more so this year,” said Geoffrey Crothall, spokesperson at China Labor Bulletin.

“And there’s always been a mismatch between the expectations of graduates, the reality of the job markets and particularly the expectations of employers,” he added.

Graduates will either take longer to find a job or settle with one that has lower pay or poor career prospects, Crothall said.

Making matters worse, the number of job opportunities in China is on the wane as China tries to move away from labor-intensive industries, said Wang Zhangcheng, head of the Labor Economics Institute at the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law.

“The transformation of industrial structure and the U.S.-China trade war [is making the situation worse]. Also, China’s economy no longer grows at a fast pace. Instead, it has matured with mid- to low-paced growths. Under such circumstances, the demand for labor has declined,” Wang said.

“Plus, many jobs have been replaced by robots as a result of the development of artificial intelligence in the past two years. That surely adds pressure on job seekers,” he added.

Fewer jobs, more seekers

A recent report by Renmin University of China (RUC) and career platform Zhaopin.com found that the number of job seekers in China grew 31% year-on-year in the first quarter – the highest growth in workers since 2011 — while the number of job vacancies shrank by 11% at the same time.

China’s job market prosperity index has dropped to a record low since 2014, it concluded.

However, the latest available state statistics paint a slightly different picture.

Official data showed that China’s surveyed unemployment rate in urban areas stood at 5.2% in March, down 0.1 percentage points from February.

Analysts described the country’s job markets as “stable overall” although the surveyed unemployment rate in 31 major cities went up 0.1 percentage points month-on-month, to 5.1% in March – the highest since late 2016.

Still, China’s State Council has made “saving jobs” one of its top policy priorities since late last year, offering incentives for firms with no or few layoffs and subsidies for internships or on-the-job training.

And college graduates remain a focal point of the council’s employment stabilization plan, along with migrants and laid-off workers.

Distorted graduate employment

China used to boast a graduate employment rate of more than 90% as universities rushed graduates to sign so-called “tripartite employment agreements” with potential employers.

Any refusal may risk their chances of thesis defense or diplomas.

Such agreements are nonbinding on the employers to offer jobs, but distort the overall graduate employment rate, which has allowed universities to attract new students – a fraud that the Ministry of Education now forbids.

In a recent notice, the ministry has disallowed universities from withholding graduates’ degree certificates if they refuse to sign such agreements.

In spite of the ban, graduates still complain about “being forcefully employed.”

On Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging platform, one user wrote, “Our school still forces you to sign the agreements. The career adviser calls every day, pulling a long face.”

Another student from Rizhao Polytechnic in Shandong province noted, “Those who have signed the agreements have completed their thesis defense while many of us who haven’t signed the agreements can do nothing but wait.”

One user urged that unless the government writes the ban into law and imposes penalties, no universities would comply.

Job mismatch

Another cause of concern for graduate employment is the long-standing mismatch between the knowledge and skills students have acquired from years of studies in universities, and the private sector’s actual job requirements, professor Wang said.

Given the shifts of production paradigms and “widening structural gaps in labor forces allocations, many of our universities have set up professional courses which may not keep up with the changing [requirements] of the labor markets. That leads to the scenario that many graduates may not find the right career fit for their skills,” the professor said.

As a solution, the education ministry has encouraged universities to focus on fundamentals by providing multifaceted cultivation of talents, so graduates leaving school will meet what different jobs require.
…

A record number of 8.34 million university graduates are set to enter the Chinese job market this summer amid escalating trade tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Observers say that as China’s export-dependent economy braces for more hits from tariff hikes, which U.S. President Donald Trump recently imposed, the country’s job markets will be tighter for everyone including fresh graduates.

And the impact of a job mismatch among college graduates has long weighed on their actual employment rate at only 52% this year, according to a recent survey.

That means more than 4 million graduates will soon join the ranks of those unemployed, although many of them may opt to pursue higher education, the survey found.

Tightening job market

“Graduate employment has always been problematic in China. Given the current situation with the trade war, I think we should expect it to be even more so this year,” said Geoffrey Crothall, spokesperson at China Labor Bulletin.

“And there’s always been a mismatch between the expectations of graduates, the reality of the job markets and particularly the expectations of employers,” he added.

Graduates will either take longer to find a job or settle with one that has lower pay or poor career prospects, Crothall said.

Making matters worse, the number of job opportunities in China is on the wane as China tries to move away from labor-intensive industries, said Wang Zhangcheng, head of the Labor Economics Institute at the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law.

“The transformation of industrial structure and the U.S.-China trade war [is making the situation worse]. Also, China’s economy no longer grows at a fast pace. Instead, it has matured with mid- to low-paced growths. Under such circumstances, the demand for labor has declined,” Wang said.

“Plus, many jobs have been replaced by robots as a result of the development of artificial intelligence in the past two years. That surely adds pressure on job seekers,” he added.

Fewer jobs, more seekers

A recent report by Renmin University of China (RUC) and career platform Zhaopin.com found that the number of job seekers in China grew 31% year-on-year in the first quarter – the highest growth in workers since 2011 — while the number of job vacancies shrank by 11% at the same time.

China’s job market prosperity index has dropped to a record low since 2014, it concluded.

However, the latest available state statistics paint a slightly different picture.

Official data showed that China’s surveyed unemployment rate in urban areas stood at 5.2% in March, down 0.1 percentage points from February.

Analysts described the country’s job markets as “stable overall” although the surveyed unemployment rate in 31 major cities went up 0.1 percentage points month-on-month, to 5.1% in March – the highest since late 2016.

Still, China’s State Council has made “saving jobs” one of its top policy priorities since late last year, offering incentives for firms with no or few layoffs and subsidies for internships or on-the-job training.

And college graduates remain a focal point of the council’s employment stabilization plan, along with migrants and laid-off workers.

Distorted graduate employment

China used to boast a graduate employment rate of more than 90% as universities rushed graduates to sign so-called “tripartite employment agreements” with potential employers.

Any refusal may risk their chances of thesis defense or diplomas.

Such agreements are nonbinding on the employers to offer jobs, but distort the overall graduate employment rate, which has allowed universities to attract new students – a fraud that the Ministry of Education now forbids.

In a recent notice, the ministry has disallowed universities from withholding graduates’ degree certificates if they refuse to sign such agreements.

In spite of the ban, graduates still complain about “being forcefully employed.”

On Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging platform, one user wrote, “Our school still forces you to sign the agreements. The career adviser calls every day, pulling a long face.”

Another student from Rizhao Polytechnic in Shandong province noted, “Those who have signed the agreements have completed their thesis defense while many of us who haven’t signed the agreements can do nothing but wait.”

One user urged that unless the government writes the ban into law and imposes penalties, no universities would comply.

Job mismatch

Another cause of concern for graduate employment is the long-standing mismatch between the knowledge and skills students have acquired from years of studies in universities, and the private sector’s actual job requirements, professor Wang said.

Given the shifts of production paradigms and “widening structural gaps in labor forces allocations, many of our universities have set up professional courses which may not keep up with the changing [requirements] of the labor markets. That leads to the scenario that many graduates may not find the right career fit for their skills,” the professor said.

As a solution, the education ministry has encouraged universities to focus on fundamentals by providing multifaceted cultivation of talents, so graduates leaving school will meet what different jobs require.
…

Juhyun Lee contributed to this report.

SEOUL — As U.S. President Donald Trump intensifies his trade battle with China, one of the hardest-hit countries could be South Korea.

Asia’s fourth-largest economy, South Korea is especially vulnerable to the tariff war because of its reliance on foreign trade — in particular, exports to its two biggest trading partners: China and the United States.

After U.S.-China trade talks broke down, Trump last week raised tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, and threatened to do so with $300 billion more. China retaliated with tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods.

The trade war escalation, which rattled markets and threatened to hold back global growth, comes at an especially bad time for South Korea, whose economy unexpectedly contracted in the first quarter.

“South Korea is particularly vulnerable,” says Xu Xiao Chun, an economist who monitors South Korea for Moody’s Analytics. “It’s not inconceivable that you could see a second consecutive quarter of contraction of GDP, which would make it a technical recession.”

Trade war exacerbates tech woes

As the world’s leading producer of memory chips that go into consumer electronics, such as cellphones and computers, South Korea benefited from years of rapid and consistent growth in the global smartphone market.

But global demand for smartphones has plateaued. That, combined with a slowdown in China and sluggish global growth, has hurt South Korea’s export-driven economy.

In April, South Korea’s exports declined for the fifth consecutive month, falling 2% compared to the same period a year earlier.

“South Korea’s economy was already going down the wrong path… but the latest escalation in the trade war really puts a spanner (obstacle) in the works,” Xu said.

South Korea was always likely to be hurt by the U.S.-China trade war just by virtue of its proximity to China, its biggest trading partner and top export destination.

South Korea’s exports to China could be cut by about $1.3 billion a year, said An Sung-bae with the state-run Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.

But the U.S.-China tariffs also pose a more specific threat to South Korea’s crucial semiconductor industry.

Here’s how it works:

South Korea sends semiconductors to China, where they are placed into smartphones and other electronics. China then ships many of those assembled products to the United States.

Trump’s tariffs could drastically raise the price of those electronics. For example, the cost of an iPhone XS could go up by around $160 if Trump follows through on all his tariff threats, one analyst at Morgan Stanley estimated.

Those higher prices would result in fewer shipments of electronics from China to the United States. Which means South Korea would be selling a lot fewer semiconductors to China.

That could put a major dent in South Korea’s economy, since semiconductors make up nearly half of its total shipments to China.

“Companies that mainly target the Chinese market will suffer… and the South Korean export business relies heavily on the Chinese market,” said Mun Byung-Ki, a senior researcher at the Korea International Trade Association.

A bright spot?

But some analysts say the situation may not be that dire. One reason: even if South Korean exports to China decline, it may make up the gap by shipping more products to the United States — a situation that could potentially provide a major boom for South Korea’s tech industry.

Alex Holmes, a Singapore-based analyst at Capital Economics, says that already may be happening. Though South Korea’s overall export numbers are suffering, its shipments to the United States are growing, he says.

That’s particularly the case for Korean electronics that fall under U.S. tariffs. Those tariffed goods have well out-performed non-tariffed items, Holmes says, “which suggests that U.S. companies have already switched suppliers as a result of tariffs.”

The increased shipments to the United States almost cover the equivalent hit South Korea has taken as a result of the tariffs, Holmes adds.

Manufacturing shift?

The tariffs could also have a long-term impact on manufacturing in Asia, as companies shift their production bases away from China as a way to shield themselves from the trade war.

A growing number of Asian companies, including some South Korean memory chipmakers, have already begun shifting their manufacturing centers to fast-growing and cheaper countries in Southeast Asia.

“If South Korea wants to find cheaper factories in say Vietnam or one of the ASEAN countries, it could make its money back or potentially even grow more than it would have if it relied on Chinese manufacturing,” Xu said. “But those sort of actions take a lot of time, a lot of capital, and there is a lot of risk involved.”

With no end in sight to the U.S.-China trade tensions, it’s a pattern that could be repeated, threatening China’s reputation as a low-cost production base.

“The knock-on effect of this trade war will be to locate a lot more production capabilities in other countries in Asia,” Xu said.
…

Juhyun Lee contributed to this report.

SEOUL — As U.S. President Donald Trump intensifies his trade battle with China, one of the hardest-hit countries could be South Korea.

Asia’s fourth-largest economy, South Korea is especially vulnerable to the tariff war because of its reliance on foreign trade — in particular, exports to its two biggest trading partners: China and the United States.

After U.S.-China trade talks broke down, Trump last week raised tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, and threatened to do so with $300 billion more. China retaliated with tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods.

The trade war escalation, which rattled markets and threatened to hold back global growth, comes at an especially bad time for South Korea, whose economy unexpectedly contracted in the first quarter.

“South Korea is particularly vulnerable,” says Xu Xiao Chun, an economist who monitors South Korea for Moody’s Analytics. “It’s not inconceivable that you could see a second consecutive quarter of contraction of GDP, which would make it a technical recession.”

Trade war exacerbates tech woes

As the world’s leading producer of memory chips that go into consumer electronics, such as cellphones and computers, South Korea benefited from years of rapid and consistent growth in the global smartphone market.

But global demand for smartphones has plateaued. That, combined with a slowdown in China and sluggish global growth, has hurt South Korea’s export-driven economy.

In April, South Korea’s exports declined for the fifth consecutive month, falling 2% compared to the same period a year earlier.

“South Korea’s economy was already going down the wrong path… but the latest escalation in the trade war really puts a spanner (obstacle) in the works,” Xu said.

South Korea was always likely to be hurt by the U.S.-China trade war just by virtue of its proximity to China, its biggest trading partner and top export destination.

South Korea’s exports to China could be cut by about $1.3 billion a year, said An Sung-bae with the state-run Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.

But the U.S.-China tariffs also pose a more specific threat to South Korea’s crucial semiconductor industry.

Here’s how it works:

South Korea sends semiconductors to China, where they are placed into smartphones and other electronics. China then ships many of those assembled products to the United States.

Trump’s tariffs could drastically raise the price of those electronics. For example, the cost of an iPhone XS could go up by around $160 if Trump follows through on all his tariff threats, one analyst at Morgan Stanley estimated.

Those higher prices would result in fewer shipments of electronics from China to the United States. Which means South Korea would be selling a lot fewer semiconductors to China.

That could put a major dent in South Korea’s economy, since semiconductors make up nearly half of its total shipments to China.

“Companies that mainly target the Chinese market will suffer… and the South Korean export business relies heavily on the Chinese market,” said Mun Byung-Ki, a senior researcher at the Korea International Trade Association.

A bright spot?

But some analysts say the situation may not be that dire. One reason: even if South Korean exports to China decline, it may make up the gap by shipping more products to the United States — a situation that could potentially provide a major boom for South Korea’s tech industry.

Alex Holmes, a Singapore-based analyst at Capital Economics, says that already may be happening. Though South Korea’s overall export numbers are suffering, its shipments to the United States are growing, he says.

That’s particularly the case for Korean electronics that fall under U.S. tariffs. Those tariffed goods have well out-performed non-tariffed items, Holmes says, “which suggests that U.S. companies have already switched suppliers as a result of tariffs.”

The increased shipments to the United States almost cover the equivalent hit South Korea has taken as a result of the tariffs, Holmes adds.

Manufacturing shift?

The tariffs could also have a long-term impact on manufacturing in Asia, as companies shift their production bases away from China as a way to shield themselves from the trade war.

A growing number of Asian companies, including some South Korean memory chipmakers, have already begun shifting their manufacturing centers to fast-growing and cheaper countries in Southeast Asia.

“If South Korea wants to find cheaper factories in say Vietnam or one of the ASEAN countries, it could make its money back or potentially even grow more than it would have if it relied on Chinese manufacturing,” Xu said. “But those sort of actions take a lot of time, a lot of capital, and there is a lot of risk involved.”

With no end in sight to the U.S.-China trade tensions, it’s a pattern that could be repeated, threatening China’s reputation as a low-cost production base.

“The knock-on effect of this trade war will be to locate a lot more production capabilities in other countries in Asia,” Xu said.
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The Afrobytes and Viva Tech conferences in Paris this week have provided an opportunity to look at the progress that high-tech startups have made in Africa, where fundraising is booming.

According to Partech Africa, a venture capital firm, 146 startups in 19 African countries raised $1.16 billion for African digital entrepreneurs in 2018. Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa received 78% of the total funding, with Egypt close behind. 

In French-speaking Africa, Senegal is the leading hub with $22 million raised in four deals. Compared with their Anglophone peers, Africa’s Francophone countries operate in smaller markets, and lack capital and mentors.  

A key: Seeking advice

Marieme Diop, a venture capital investor at Orange Digital Ventures, said that “unfortunately in Francophone Africa, it is not in our DNA. People who succeed in business or in electing positions do not necessarily reach back to help their peers to show them how to be successful. In the Anglophone world, it is a must for anyone who wants to start something: seeking advice. So the gap is not only financial” between the regions. 

Africa is seen by many as the next frontier for venture capital, with its booming population and mobile-first economy. That’s why Google, Facebook and PayPal participated in Paris in Afrobytes 2019.  

“We do not want people globally to see African high-tech as an exotic stuff,” said Afrobytes CEO Ammin Youssouf. “We want to be heard and talk about AI, blockchain, what is happening in Silicon Valley, because it has an impact on us. We already have brilliant minds in Africa, especially in tech, to have those conversations.”

Unlike the global trend, where men dominate the high-tech industry, women are leading the movement in Africa.

“Actually, what we see in the statistics is that women’s involvement and participation on in the African continent is much higher than what you would find in New York, for example, or San Francisco,” said Ben White, chief executive officer of venture capital platform VC4Africa, who has been supporting startups on the continent for more than 10 years. “I think it is an advantage. It also means having women investors who are very sensitive to gender-related questions and can also ensure that the system we are building is inclusive.”

Governments’ role

Governments in Africa are trying to regulate the activity and even support the sector. Forty Senegalese startups last November secured a total of $2 million in government funding. But some experts say governments lack the skills needed to pick good investments.

Kenza Lahlou, co-founder and managing partner at Outlierz Ventures, said the public sector “should not invest [in startups]. States should build funds of funds. We have that in Morocco in partnership with the World Bank. The government started Innov Invest, to invest in local venture capitalist funds, to lower the risk for local funds.”

With a population expected to reach 1.4 billion people by 2021, and a continent that will put about 1 billion smartphones into use within two years, Africa is a promising area for the world’s leading high-tech and telecom companies.
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President Donald Trump’s high-profile trade offensives have grabbed headlines and rattled financial markets around the world. He’s battling China over the industries of the future, strong-arming Canada and Mexico into reshaping North American trade and threatening to tax cars from Europe. 

But his trade warriors are fighting dozens of more obscure battles — over laminated woven sacks from Vietnam, dried tart cherries from Turkey, rubber bands from Thailand and many others.

Under the radar, the Trump administration has launched 162 investigations into allegations that U.S. trading partners dump products at cut-rate prices or unfairly subsidize their exporters — a 224% jump from the number of cases the Obama administration pursued in the same time in office.  

If the U.S Commerce Department finds that U.S. companies have been hurt — and ultimately if the independent International Trade Commission goes along — the offending imports are slapped with duties that can price them out of the market.

On Thursday, for instance, the department announced levies of up to 337% in combat over kitchen and bathroom countertops — or at least over the imported quartz slabs from China that many of them derive from. 

These cases have nothing directly to do with the mother of all Trump’s trade wars: a cage match with China over Beijing’s aggressive push to transform Chinese companies into world leaders in cutting-edge industries like artificial intelligence and electric cars. In that one, the world’s two biggest economies have slapped tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of each other’s products. 

Companies target competitors

The smaller anti-dumping and “countervailing duty” (aimed at unfair subsidies) cases are usually brought by U.S. companies or industries that say they’re being victimized by foreign competitors. But for the first time in more than 25 years, the administration in 2017 brought a case on its own — against a common alloy aluminum sheet from China — without waiting for an industry’s plea for help. 

“They’re much more aggressive in every way,” said Mary Lovely, a Syracuse University economist.  

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says that the administration’s trade policies have “irrevocably changed the conversation on trade” and that the dumping and subsidy cases “help level the playing field for U.S. companies and workers.” 

Like any conflict, though, the battles over remote patches of the commercial marketplace leave winners and losers. Lovely says the Trump administration’s intervention in trade cases risks “tilting the playing field toward particular industries,” driving up prices and making the economy less efficient by driving away competition. 

Whatever the impact, the administration’s America First approach to trade is encouraging more companies to bring more cases.  

“Everybody knows that this administration is concerned about unfair trade and is very willing to offset unfair trade where that is warranted.,” said Gilbert Kaplan, the Commerce Department’s undersecretary for international trade. 

The dollar amounts in anti-dumping and countervailing duty cases are too small to make a real dent in the $21 trillion U.S. economy. But for the companies involved, the stakes often couldn’t be higher. 

Newsprint duties

America’s struggling newspapers, for instance, saw their costs spike when the Commerce Department last year imposed anti-dumping and countervailing duties on Canadian newsprint. Some newspaper companies planned layoffs as a result. But in August, the trade commission, which acts as an independent tribunal in trade cases, overturned the duties, sparing newspapers devastating cost increases. 

The newsprint case was brought by a single company: a hedge fund-owned paper producer in Washington state.  

Likewise, the offensive against imported quartz slabs from China originated from a single complaint: Cambria, a maker of quartz products, including high-end kitchen and bathroom countertops, based in Le Sueur, Minn.  

Cambria CEO Martin Davis says the U.S. marketplace was flooded by low-priced quartz slabs from China. Commerce Department figures show that imports from China surged 78% in 2016 and 54% in 2017. The influx, Davis said, was subsidized by the Chinese government. 

“My company was going down,” he said. 

Davis sought relief from the government. He said that pursuing the case has cost him $5 million. Commerce agreed to impose anti-dumping and countervailing duties on Chinese quartz slabs last year.  

On Thursday, the department announced its final decision on the duties, hitting Chinese quartz slabs with anti-dumping duties of up to 337% and with countervailing duties of up to 191%.  

​’We will lose money’

The levies are bad news for U.S. companies that make countertops from imported quartz. Jeff Keck of Marble Uniques in Tipton, Ind., says the higher duties struck while his company was working on a contract to provide quartz countertops to an apartment complex. 

“We will lose money on the project,” he said. 

Making things worse from his perspective: The duties are retroactive to August. 

Paul Nathanson, spokesman for the American Quartz Worker Coalition set up to fight the duties, said that Cambria is abusing trade law. 

“They are using the U.S. government to try to wipe out their competitors,” he said. 

The ITC held a hearing last week at which opponents of the duties argued that high-end Cambria doesn’t actually compete with inexpensive Chinese imports. The commission is expected to rule on the case next month. If it finds that Cambria wasn’t hurt by the imports, the ITC could strike down the duties. 

For now, the sanctions on quartz imports are helping some businesses, and not just Cambria. Among them is Blackbird Manufacturing, an Owensboro, Ky., company that makes stone countertops. CEO David Thomas said that Blackbird couldn’t compete with low-priced Chinese quartz for contracts with penny-pinching hotel chains. 

Now that Chinese quartz slabs are now being taxed out of the market, “we’re getting jobs landing twice a week, and they’re big jobs,” Thomas said. Blackbird has hired about 15 workers since June and now has a staff of 52. He plans to add 20 more this year. 

But as the administration mounts trade cases in dozens of industries, many companies, especially small ones, can be blindsided by duties they didn’t see coming, said Paula Connelly, a trade lawyer in Woburn, Mass. 

“I’ve been in this business a long time, and I’ve never seen this volume of investigation,” she said.  

Recently, she has fielded calls from importers who were hit unexpectedly by the big tariffs on quartz. One business owner said he might have to close shop. 

“They had two days to come up with a couple of hundred thousand dollars in anti-dumping and countervailing duties,” she said. 
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Executives from major global retailers played down the threat to employment in stores from artificial intelligence and automation on Thursday and pledged more training to help staff adopt more high-value tasks as machines take over their work.

Retail is one of the largest employers in many developed economies and experts have predicted automation puts millions of low-skilled jobs in the sector at risk, particularly as the introduction of self-checkouts makes cashiers redundant.

“Technology can liberate people from repetitive tasks,” Barbara Martin Coppola, chief digital officer at Swedish furniture giant IKEA, told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Retail Congress, an annual industry gathering.

“These jobs are not gone. We are believers in the talent we have in our house and we look to repurpose it into more fulfilling tasks.”

Martin Coppola said IKEA needs far fewer people to select the goods displayed on the firm’s website, known as online merchandising, as algorithms get more sophisticated. But these people can be trained in digital marketing instead.

“It is important to see technology as an enabler and not to let it be at the expense of human beings and the planet,” she said.

Walmart, the world’s biggest private employer with 2.2 million staff, has been adding self check-outs and announced last month that it would be rolling out automated shelf scanners, to check product availability, and cleaning robots.

“Cleaning the floor is not a thing that brings a person fulfillment,” said Tom Faitak, Walmart’s senior manager for AI, robotics and automation, adding that automating repetitive tasks gives staff more time to help customers.

“Robots are not fantastic at interacting with people,” he said. “Robots are good at doing the same task over and over, not finding an item on the shelf.”

Walmart staff who are freed up from some repetitive tasks are increasingly being redeployed to pick orders placed online and prepare them for curbside pickup.

Consultants McKinsey estimate that 53 percent of activities in retailing are automatable, particularly in stock management and logistics. It predicts that next generation automated grocery stores could see the number of labor hours for inventory and stocking cut by two thirds.

Walmart and Kroger – the biggest U.S. supermarket chain — say they are committed to developing their store workers so they are not left behind.

Walmart offers training to tens of thousands of associates through an “Academy” program, while Kroger launched a new scheme last year to promote continued education, from high school certificates to doctorates.

Kroger Chairman and Chief Executive Rodney McMullen, who started out as a store clerk at the chain and had his college education supported by the company, noted that U.S. unemployment was at its lowest for decades, pushing automation.

“Part of it is because you just can’t find people,” he said, noting that the company was creating higher-paid jobs in software engineering as it seeks to modernize the business. The Cincinnati-based company has built robot-aided warehouses and is trying out self-driving vehicles to improve delivery.
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