Tag: Supply Chain

TikTok, Shein and Other Companies Distance Themselves From China

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As it expanded internationally, Shein, the rapidly growing fast fashion app, progressively cut ties to its home country, China. It moved its headquarters to Singapore and de-registered its original company in Nanjing. It set up operations in Ireland and Indiana, and hired Washington lobbyists to highlight its U.S. expansion plans as it prepares for a potential initial public offering this year. Yet the clothing retailer can’t shake the focus on its ties with China. Along with other brands like the viral social app TikTok and shopping app Temu, Shein has…

Europe Frets U.S. Battery Factory Subsidies Will Hurt, Not Help

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European leaders complained for years that the United States was not doing enough to fight climate change. Now that the Biden administration has devoted hundreds of billions of dollars to that cause, many Europeans are complaining that the United States is going about it the wrong way. That new critique is born of a deep fear in Germany, France, Britain and other European countries that Washington’s approach will hurt the allies it ought to be working with, luring away much of the new investments in electric car and battery factories not already…

Australia Tries to Break Its Dependence on China for Lithium Mining

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Deep in rural Western Australia, Pilbara Minerals’ vast processing plant looms above the red dirt, quivering as tons of a lithium ore slurry move through its pipes. The plant turns the ore from a nearby quarry into spodumene, a greenish crystalline powder that is about 6 percent lithium and sells for about $5,700 a ton. From there, the spodumene is shipped to China, where it is further refined so it can be used in the batteries that power goods like cellphones and electric cars. Australia mines about 53 percent of…

China Escalates U.S. Tech War With Micron Ban

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When cutting foreign technology companies from Chinese supply chains, Beijing has long chosen to work obliquely or even secretly. Regulators would give executives back-room lectures, weigh them down with excessive red tape or hit them with occasional office raids. Rarely did the government tell a firm outright it was no longer welcome. But that is what it signaled to Micron Technology in a late-night announcement on Sunday. The Chinese government banned companies that handle critical information from purchasing microchips made by the Boise, Idaho-based Micron. The company’s chips, which are…

China Bans Some Chip Sales of Micron, the US Company

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Beijing on Sunday told Chinese companies that deal with critical information to stop purchasing products from Micron Technology, the U.S.-based manufacturer of memory chips used in phones, computers and other electronics. Many analysts viewed the move as retaliation for Washington’s efforts to cut off China’s access to high-end chips. In a statement on its official social media site, the Cyberspace Administration of China said that in a cybersecurity review it had found that the chip maker’s products posed “relatively serious cybersecurity problems.” The problems could “seriously endanger the supply chain…

The U.S. Needs Minerals for Electric Cars. Everyone Else Wants Them Too.

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For decades, a group of the world’s biggest oil producers has held huge sway over the American economy and the popularity of U.S. presidents through its control of the global oil supply, with decisions by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries determining what U.S. consumers pay at the pump. As the world shifts to cleaner sources of energy, control over the materials needed to power that transition is still up for grabs. China currently dominates global processing of the critical minerals that are now in high demand to make…

G7 Countries Borrow China’s Economic Strategy

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Midway through his face-to-face meeting with President Biden in Indonesia last fall, the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, offered an unsolicited warning. Mr. Biden had in the preceding months signed a series of laws aimed at supercharging America’s industrial capacity and imposed new limits on the export of technology to China, in hopes of dominating the race for advanced energy technologies that could help fight climate change. For months, he and his aides had worked to recruit allied countries to impose their own restrictions on sending technology to China. The effort echoed…

Can the World Make an Electric Car Battery Without China?

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It is one of the defining competitions of our age: The countries that can make batteries for electric cars will reap decades of economic and geopolitical advantages. The only winner so far is China. Despite billions in Western investment, China is so far ahead — mining rare minerals, training engineers and building huge factories — that the rest of the world may take decades to catch up. Even by 2030, China will make more than twice as many batteries as every other country combined, according to estimates from Benchmark Minerals,…

U.S. Solar Makers Criticize Biden’s Tax Credits as Too Lax on China

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Biden administration rules released on Friday that will determine which companies and manufacturers can benefit from new solar industry tax credits are being criticized by U.S.-based makers of solar products, who say the guidelines do not go far enough to try to lure manufacturing back from China. The rules stem from President Biden’s sweeping clean energy bill, which offers a mix of tax credits and other incentives to try and spur the construction of more solar factories in the United States and reduce the country’s reliance on China for clean…

‘De-Americanize’: How China Is Remaking Its Chip Business

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Last October, construction plans for a hulking semiconductor factory owned by a major state-backed company in central China fell into disarray. The Biden administration had escalated the trade war over technology, severing China’s access to the Western tools and skilled workers it needed to build the most advanced semiconductors. Some employees with U.S. citizenship departed the company. Three U.S. equipment suppliers almost immediately halted their shipments and services, and Europe and Japan are expected to do the same soon. The facility belonged to Yangtze Memory Technologies Corporation, or YMTC, a…