China places 74.9% anti-dumping duties on ‘plastic’
Beijing — China on Sunday announced anti-dumping duties as high as 74.9% on imports of POM copolymers, a type of engineering plastic, from the US, the EU, Japan and Taiwan.
The commerce ministry’s findings conclude a probe launched in May 2024, shortly after the US sharply increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and other imports.
POM copolymers can partially replace metals such as copper and zinc and have various applications including in auto parts, electronics and medical equipment, the ministry has said. Reuters
Uncertain Portuguese start casting their ballots
Lisbon — Polls opened across Portugal on Sunday as millions of voters started casting their ballots in a third parliamentary election in as many years, though many are bracing for more uncertainty as the vote is unlikely to deliver a stable government.
Sunday’s ballot was called just one year into the centre-right minority government’s term after Prime Minister Luis Montenegro failed to win parliament’s confidence in March in a vote he proposed when the opposition questioned his integrity over the dealings of his family’s consultancy firm.
Montenegro has denied any wrongdoing and most opinion polls have shown voters dismissing the opposition’s criticism. Reuters
South Korea’s presidential candidates in TV debate
Seoul South Korea’s presidential candidates faced off in their first TV debate on Sunday evening ahead of a snap election on June 3 to choose a successor to former President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was impeached over his short-lived martial law declaration in December.
Sunday’s debate, the first of three TV debates scheduled over the next two weeks, will focus on how to revitalise the struggling economy, one of the hot-button election issues.
Asia’s fourth-largest economy contracted in the first quarter as exports and consumption stalled amid fears over the impact of Washington’s aggressive tariffs and political turmoil at home. Reuters
China truck sales could be 50% electric by 2028
Beijing — Half of China’s sales of heavy trucks could be electric vehicles by 2028, up from 10% in 2024, the chairperson of battery maker CATL said on Sunday, according to a media report.
The comments by Zeng Yuqun, made at a heavy-truck battery-swapping launch and reported by the Shanghai government-affiliated news site Jiemian, suggest further headwinds for fuel demand in the trucking sector, already hit by the rise of LNG trucks in China.
CATL announced on Saturday it had put a 60 gigawatt-hour energy storage and EV battery manufacturing base into production in Shandong, its first such facility in northern China. Reuters
Aussie PM plays down free trade deal with EU
Sydney — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese played down prospects of securing a breakthrough on a free-trade agreement with the EU when he meets with EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in Rome.
Australia in October 2023 rejected EU proposals for a free-trade agreement that the two sides negotiated since 2018 — a move that was expected to foreclose prospects of a deal for several years.
Albanese, set to meet Von der Leyen on the sidelines of Pope Leo XIV’s inauguration, said it was unlikely the talks would lead to much movement on progressing a deal.
“I wouldn’t expect any big announcements,” Albanese said, according to a transcript of comments to media in the Italian capital on Saturday. Reuters
Join us or else, Syria tells small armed groups
Damascus — Syria’s defence minister has called on small armed groups that have yet to merge with the security apparatus to do so within 10 days or face unspecified measures, in a bid to consolidate state authority six months after Bashar al-Assad was toppled.
A plethora of weapons outside government control has posed a challenge to interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s efforts to establish control, as groups that both back him and oppose him remain armed.
Syrian defence minister Murhaf Abu Qasra, in a statement late on Saturday, said “military units” had now been integrated into “a unified institutional framework”, calling this a great achievement. Reuters
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