Trade alert

  • Argentina: Preliminary anti-dumping ruling on atomizers. Preliminary anti-dumping ruling was made on atomizers originating in mainland China and Taiwan, China, and it was decided to levy temporary anti-dumping duties at the lowest price: US$25.36/set for the products involved in the case in mainland China, and US$24.97/set for the products involved in Taiwan, China set.
  • Brazil: Reduce import duties for some products. On May 11, the Brazilian Ministry of Economy announced that in order to alleviate the impact of high inflation on production and life in the country, the Brazilian government officially reduced or exempted import tariffs on 11 products. Products that have been removed from tariffs include frozen boneless beef, chicken, wheat flour, wheat, biscuits, bakery products and confectionery, sulphuric acid and corn kernels. In addition, the import tariffs on CA50 and CA60 rebars have been reduced from 10.8% to 4%, and the import tariffs on Mancozeb (fungicide) have been reduced from 12.6% to 4%. At the same time, the Brazilian government will also announce an overall reduction of 10% in import tariffs on various products, except for a few products such as automobiles and cane sugar.
  • Egypt: ACID policy extended to air freight from October 1. According to the official website of the Egyptian Customs, Egypt’s air cargo will be pre-registered before shipment on May 15, and it will be enforced on October 1. (Advanced Cargo Information (ACI) declaration)For all imported goods in Egypt, the consignee must first forecast the goods information in the local system to obtain the ACID number and provide it to the consignor; the Chinese exporter needs to complete the registration on the CargoX website and cooperate with the customer to upload the necessary information.
  • Australia: The Anti-dumping Commission recently announced that it has launched a new anti-dumping export review investigation on wind power towers imported into China.

Trade

  • South Korea: Semiconductor exports rose 16% to $10.9 billion in April, surpassing $10 billion for the 12th month in a row. Among them, the export of memory chips increased by 7.7% to 6.38 billion US dollars, increasing for 20 consecutive months.
  • Kazakhstan, Finland: Cooperation to open the China-Finland railway freight line. According to a report by the Kazakhstan News Agency on May 12, Finnish freight operator Nurminen Logistics opened the China-Kazakhstan-Finland railway freight line, which will utilize the Kazakhstan Trans-Caspian multimodal international transport line.

China industry

  • China Ferroalloy Industry Association: The whole industry of manganese alloy products suffers losses, and sales are under great pressure. The manganese series professional committee called on the participating 40 manganese series member units to fully carry out self-help in the industry, strictly implement the limit and reduce production by 50%. The mine purchased 1.2 million tons to alleviate the serious surplus of manganese alloys.
  • Sauce wine is the fastest growing mainstream flavor in the liquor industry. It is estimated that the sauce and wine industry will achieve revenue of about 350 billion yuan in 2025 (accounting for 44% of the industry), with a 5-year compound growth rate of about 18%.

China

  • Ministry of Commerce: From January to April, the actual use of foreign capital nationwide was 478.61 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.5%. Since the beginning of this year, China’s foreign investment has mainly been characterized by three aspects: first, rapid growth, second, sufficient gold content, and third, stable major projects, with an average of 1.5 major foreign investment projects landing every day.
  • In 2021, the GDP will reach 114 trillion yuan, and its proportion in the global economy will increase from 11.4% in 2012 to more than 18%, and its status as the world’s second largest economy will be consolidated and improved. The per capita GDP reaches 12,500 US dollars, which is close to the threshold of high-income countries. In recent years, China’s contribution to world economic growth has remained at around 30%, making it the largest growth engine.
  • China’s Zhurong rover recently detected water-bearing minerals in situ on Mars for the first time using the short-wave infrared spectrometer on the rover in the southern area of ​​the Utopia Plain on Mars. The Zhurong rover found signs of recent water activity in the landing area.
  • Beijing: An artificial intelligence innovation park will be built in the North District of Zhongguancun Science City, which is expected to be completed and put into use by the end of 2024.

Company

  • Longbai Group: Since May 12, the sales price of titanium dioxide has been raised, and the sales price of chlorinated titanium dioxide has been increased by 700 yuan/ton on the basis of the original price.
  • Volkswagen: It plans to produce 800,000 pure electric cars globally this year, as it strives to reach its goal of making up half of all car sales by 2030. In addition, its Porsche plans to conduct an IPO in the fourth quarter of this year.
  • SoftBank Group: In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021, a net loss of 2.1 trillion yen (about 16.2 billion U.S. dollars) was the largest quarterly net loss on record.
  • The number of Amazon Chinese sellers has grown 40 times in four years. And in 2021, the time it takes for Chinese sellers to settle on Amazon to complete brand registration will be shortened by an average of 40%. At the same time, it released the latest trends in brand building and cross-border intellectual property protection for Chinese sellers.
  • Macedo achieved better-than-expected growth in the first quarter. A few days ago, Mercadolibre announced financial data for the first quarter of 2021. The data shows that the platform’s revenue in the first quarter increased by 111.4% year-on-year to $1.38 billion, of which e-commerce business increased by 139.2% year-on-year to $910.6 million.
  • The big European port “Antwerp-Bruges” was born. The two major Belgian ports of Antwerp and Zeebrugge have announced their official merger, and the combined port will be named “Antwerp-Bruges Port”. After the merger, the port has become Belgium’s largest economic engine to date, as well as Europe’s largest export port, largest automobile port and largest integrated chemical cluster.
  • Hapag-Lloyd adjusts cancellation fees, lost cabin fees and compensation fees.
  • Saudi Aramco is once again the world’s most valuable company. Recently, the Riyadh stock exchange in Saudi Arabia showed that the share price of Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, was pushed to a record high due to the rise in oil prices, and its market value surpassed that of Apple to become the world’s most valuable company. This is the first time since 2020 that Saudi Aramco has regained the top spot in the company’s market capitalization.
  • Disney’s second-quarter net profit was $470 million, down 48% year-on-year. But total streaming service subscribers rose to 137.7 million, beating market expectations of 135 million.

World

  • US: In April, US PPI rose 11% year-on-year and 0.5% month-on-month; CPI and core CPI fell year-on-year, but core CPI had strong month-on-month momentum, higher than market expectations. From the perspective of sub-items, the prices of travel-related products (air tickets, new cars, hotels) have risen sharply, indicating strong demand, and the rents of houses with a high proportion of weight have also accelerated.
  • United States: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report that the U.S. consumer price index (CPI) rose 8.3% year-on-year in April, higher than the expected 8.1%.
  • EU: Promoting a ban on the sale of fuel vehicles by 2035.
  • Thailand: Approved the establishment of four new special economic zones to boost economic development. Among them, the Northeast Economic Corridor focuses on the construction of bio-economic industry production bases.
  • South Africa: Hydrogen economy will reach $150 billion in 2050. The South African Mining Council issued a statement on May 11, saying that relevant research shows that by 2050, South Africa’s hydrogen economy is expected to reach 150 billion US dollars.
  • Japan: Legislative ban on the sale of crayfish. On May 11, the Japanese parliament voted to pass the revised Alien Organism Law, which will ban the sale of Mississippi red-eared turtles and crayfish in the future.
  • Germany: The inflation rate rose to 7.4% in April, of which the overall price of goods rose by 12.2% year-on-year, and the price of energy products was 35.3% higher than the same period last year.
  • Indonesia’s economy grew 5.01% year-on-year in the first quarter. Indonesia’s National Bureau of Statistics recently announced that the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter of this year was 4,513.0 trillion rupiah at current prices, a year-on-year increase of 5.01%. At present, almost all supply-side sectors in the country, such as transportation, warehousing, industry, service, agriculture, and construction, have experienced positive growth.