ITC DISCUSSES DUMPING CHARGES AGAINST TAIWAN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Washington, Nov. 13 (CNA) The US federal International Trade Commission (ITC) held a conference on Friday to discuss dumping allegations leveled against several Taiwan companies.
Although the six ITC members were not present at the conference, their assistants questioned Micron Technology of the United States, which filed the dumping charges against Taiwan in October. They also questioned the representatives of the Taiwan companies, and the results will be written up in report form for the ITC to make an initial ruling on Dec. 7.
It is understood that one of six members of the commission might abstain from voting, and the US lawyer representing Taiwan said that this means the Taiwan side will need at least three votes to win in the initial ruling on whether Taiwan's products have damaged US industry.
Hu Cheng-tah, secretary-general of the Taiwan Semiconductor Industrial Association, said Taiwan performed well at the conference and presented a strong defense. Nevertheless, he predicted that "Taiwan will lose the initial ruling."
The lawyer said that Taiwan has stressed the different technology level of its products, adding that the major products of Micron Tech are 64MB dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips, while Taiwan's products are 16MB DRAMs, which do not compete with the American products.
Taiwan's DRAMs are also alternative products. Japan's Mitsubishi, which has a strategic alliance with a Taiwan semiconductor company, also spoke for Taiwan, stressing that Japanese companies can easily transfer orders from Taiwan to South Korea and Singapore, and that it is groundless for Micron Tech to claim that Taiwan's lower prices have damaged or threatened its operations.
The lawyer representing Taiwan said that Steve Appleton, CEO of Micron Tech, earlier this week painted a rosy picture of the world semiconductor industry, saying that although the DRAM market declined by 34.8 percent this year, it is expected to rebound by 25 percent next year, and 28 percent in 2000.
However, Micron Tech denied at the meeting that the global DRAM market will rebound, saying that such predictions have been repeated several times, and do not mean that Micron Tech will not be damaged by Taiwan dumping.
The lawyer representing Micron Tech said that they were not surprised by Taiwan inviting a Mitsubishi representative to the conference, pointing out that Taiwan invited Motorola to speak for the island in a discussion about SRAM dumping earlier this year, and still lost the case.
But Taiwan's lawyer said that the initial ruling does not represent the key battlefield. The first ruling only determines whether or not the case will continue to be investigated, he said, and the key will be the final ruling next summer. The lawyer expressed confidence in Taiwan's ability to win the final victory |
