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Tag: Manufacturing sector

  • ASML made record $11.5 billion profit in 2025 thanks to AI-driven demand, plans to cut 1,700 jobs

    THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Dutch semiconductor chip machine maker ASML recorded a record net profit of 9.6 billion euros ($11.5 billion) in 2025 on sales of 32.7 billion euros fueled by AI-driven demand, the company reported Wednesday as it also announced plans to slash its workforce by about 1,700, about 4% of its workforce.

    The growth comes despite Dutch government restrictions on exports of machines that can be used to make chips that can be integrated into weapons systems. The measures, initially announced in 2023 and later expanded, are seen as part of a U.S. policy that aims at limiting China’s access to such technology.

    “In the last months, many of our customers have shared a notably more positive assessment of the medium-term market situation, primarily based on more robust expectations of the sustainability of AI-related demand. This is reflected in a marked step-up in their medium-term capacity plans and in our record order intake,” ASML President and Chief Executive Officer Christophe Fouquet said in a statement.

    In a message to employees, the company said it was cutting jobs in order to become more streamlined and efficient. It said ASML was “choosing to make these changes at a moment of strength for the company. Improving our processes and systems will allow us to innovate more and innovate better, generating further responsible growth for ASML and our stakeholders.”

    The job cuts are intended to sharpen ASML’s focus on engineering and innovation by streamlining the company’s technology and IT departments, the message said.

    The company said it expects 2026 to be “another growth year for ASML’s business” driven by sales of its extreme ultraviolet lithography systems.

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  • Analysis-China can’t make consumers buy goods, so it leans on services to drive economy

    By Kevin Yao

    BEIJING, Jan 21 (Reuters) – China is planning to introduce new measures to promote the consumption of services, betting that elderly care, healthcare and leisure can offset tepid demand for goods, though analysts say the plan’s success hinges on elevating household incomes and social welfare.

    Beijing views labor-intensive services as a key to reorienting its economy toward consumption as it tries to wean itself off a traditional dependence ​on big-ticket investment and exports.

    Authorities are likely to unveil incentives, ease market barriers and invest in high-growth sectors to tackle supply gaps, but deeper reforms to elevate incomes and strengthen the safety net are critical, policy advisers ‌and analysts say.

    In contrast to China’s manufacturing sector – where supply often exceeds demand – the services sector faces chronic shortages because of underdevelopment and years of policy bias towards factories.

    “Policymakers are placing greater emphasis on services consumption given its big potential,” said a policy adviser who requested anonymity because they were not ‌authorised to speak publicly. “But expanding the sector will be a gradual process, aligned with the pace of economic transformation.”

    Chinese leaders have vowed to “significantly” lift household consumption’s share of the economy over the next five years. Most policy advisers believe China should lift its share to 45% by 2030, up from roughly 40% at present.

    Leaders have vowed to “invest in people” by boosting spending on education, healthcare and social security – a signal of stronger support for families and a push to lift household spending power.

    Chinese households are channelling more spending into services – from elderly care to travel and entertainment – as demand for big-ticket goods plateaus. Most families appear to have sufficient supplies of goods and per-capita GDP is nearing $14,000. The shift underscores China’s move toward a services-led consumption model.

    “Rebalancing itself is more a matter ⁠of the relative importance of consumption and investment in the economy, rather than whether ‌consumption takes the form of goods or services,” said Fred Neumann, chief Asia economist at HSBC.

    “That said, as household incomes increase with economic development and as households become older, the demand for services should grow faster than that for goods.”

    China’s economy grew 5% last year, matching the government’s target, by seizing a record share of global goods demand to offset weak domestic consumption, a ‍strategy that blunted the impact of U.S. tariffs.

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  • Chinese steel factory officials detained after explosion that leaves 4 dead, 6 missing

    Chinese police have detained those in charge of a steel factory in Inner Mongolia after an explosion killed four people

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  • In a warming world, freshwater production is moving deep beneath the sea

    CARLSBAD, Calif. — Some four miles off the Southern California coast, a company is betting it can solve one of desalination’s biggest problems by moving the technology deep below the ocean’s surface.

    OceanWell’s planned Water Farm 1 would use natural ocean pressure to power reverse osmosis — a process that forces seawater through membranes to filter out salt and impurities — and produce up to 60 million gallons (nearly 225 million liters) of freshwater daily. Desalination is energy intensive, with plants worldwide producing between 500 and 850 million tons of carbon emissions annually — approaching the roughly 880 million tons emitted by the entire global aviation industry.

    OceanWell claims its deep sea approach — 1,300 feet (400 meters) below the water’s surface — would cut energy use by about 40% compared to conventional plants while also tackling the other major environmental problems plaguing traditional desalination: the highly concentrated brine discharged back into the ocean, where it can harm seafloor habitats, including coral reefs, and the intake systems that trap and kill fish larvae, plankton and other organisms at the base of the marine food web.

    “The freshwater future of the world is going to come from the ocean,” said OceanWell CEO Robert Bergstrom. “And we’re not going to ask the ocean to pay for it.”

    It’s an ambitious promise at a time when the world desperately needs alternatives. As climate change intensifies droughts, disrupts rainfall patterns and fuels wildfires, more regions are turning to the sea for drinking water. For many countries, particularly in the arid Middle East, parts of Africa and Pacific island nations, desalination isn’t optional — there simply isn’t enough freshwater to meet demand. More than 20,000 plants now operate worldwide, and the industry has been expanding at about 7% annually since 2010.

    “With aridity and climate change issues increasing, desalination will become more and more prevalent as a key technology globally,” said Peiying Hong, a professor of environmental science and engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.

    But scientists warn that as desalination scales, the cumulative damage to coastal ecosystems — many already under pressure from warming waters and pollution — could intensify.

    Some companies are powering plants with renewable energy, while others are developing more efficient membrane technology to reduce energy consumption. Still others are moving the technology underwater entirely. Norway-based Flocean and Netherlands-based Waterise have tested subsea desalination systems and are working toward commercial deployment. Beyond southern California, OceanWell has signed an agreement to test its system in Nice, France — another region facing intensifying droughts and wildfires — beginning this year.

    For now, its technology remains in development. A single prototype operates in the Las Virgenes Reservoir where the local water district has partnered with the company in hopes of diversifying its water supply. If successful, the reverse osmosis pods would eventually float above the sea floor in the Santa Monica Bay, anchored with minimal concrete footprint, while an underwater pipeline would transport freshwater to shore. The system would use screens designed to keep out even microscopic plankton and would produce less concentrated brine discharge.

    Gregory Pierce, director of UCLA’s Water Resources Group, said deep sea desalination appears promising from an environmental and technical standpoint, but the real test will be cost.

    “It’s almost always much higher than you project” with new technologies, he said. “So that, I think, will be the make or break for the technology.”

    Las Virgenes Reservoir serves about 70,000 residents in western Los Angeles County. Nearly all the water originates in the northern Sierra Nevada and is pumped some 400 miles (640 kilometers) over the Tehachapi Mountains — a journey that requires massive amounts of energy. During years of low rainfall and snowpack in the Sierra, the reservoir and communities it serves suffer.

    About 100 miles (160 kilometers) down the coast, the Carlsbad Desalination Plant has become a focal point in the state’s debate over desalination’s environmental tradeoffs.

    The plant came online in 2015 as the largest seawater desalination facility in North America. Capable of producing up to 54 million gallons (204 million liters) of drinking water daily, it supplies about 10% of San Diego County’s water — enough for roughly 400,000 households.

    In Southern California, intensifying droughts and wildfires have exposed the region’s precarious water supply. Agricultural expansion and population growth have depleted local groundwater reserves, leaving cities dependent on imported water. San Diego imports roughly 90% of its supply from the Colorado River and Northern California — sources that are becoming increasingly strained by climate change. Desalination was pitched as a solution: a local, drought-proof source of drinking water drawn from the Pacific Ocean.

    But environmental groups have argued the plant’s seawater intake and brine discharge pose risks to marine life, while its high energy demands drive up water bills and worsen climate change. Before the plant came online, environmental organizations filed more than a dozen legal challenges and regulatory disputes. Most were dismissed but some resulted in changes to the project’s design and permits.

    “It sucks in a tremendous amount of water, and with that, sea life,” said Patrick McDonough, a senior attorney with San Diego Coastkeeper, which has participated in multiple legal challenges to the project. “We’re not just talking fish, turtles, birds, but larvae and spores — entire ecosystems.”

    A 2009 Regional Water Quality Control Board order estimated the plant would entrap some 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) of fish daily and required offsetting those impacts by restoring wetlands elsewhere. Seventeen years later, that restoration remains incomplete. And a 2019 study found the plant’s brine discharge raises offshore salinity above permitted levels, though it detected no significant biological changes — likely because the site had already been heavily altered by decades of industrial activity from a neighboring power plant.

    Those impacts are especially acute in California, where roughly 95% of coastal wetlands have been lost largely to development, leaving the remaining lagoons as vital habitats for fish and migratory birds.

    “When we start messing with these very critical and unfortunately sparse coastal lagoons and wetlands, it can have tremendous impacts in the ocean,” McDonough said.

    Michelle Peters, chief executive officer of Channelside Water Resources, which owns the plant, said the facility uses large organism exclusion devices and one-millimeter screens to minimize marine life uptake, though she acknowledged some smaller species can still pass through.

    The plant dilutes its brine discharge with additional seawater before releasing it back into the ocean, and years of monitoring have shown no measurable impacts to surrounding marine life, she said.

    Peters said the Carlsbad plant has significantly cut its energy consumption through efficiency improvements and operates under a plan aimed at making the facility carbon net-neutral.

    Many experts say water recycling and conservation should come first, noting wastewater purification typically uses far less energy than seawater desalination and can substantially reduce impacts on marine life. Las Virgenes is pursuing a wastewater reuse project alongside its desalination partnership.

    “What we are looking for is a water supply that we can count on when Mother Nature does not deliver,” Las Virgenes’ Pedersen said. “Developing new sources of local water is really a critical measure to be more drought and climate ready.”

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    Follow Annika Hammerschlag on Instagram @ahammergram.

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    The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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  • This Vietnamese town boomed as factories left China. Now it’s asking what’s next?

    BAC NINH, Vietnam — The transformation of Vietnam’s Bac Ninh is evident in the signs above its shops and the spicy Chinese and Korean dishes on its tables.

    Once known for its rice fields and the love duets of its centuries-old Quan Ho folk songs, the city just north of Hanoi has become one of Vietnam’s busiest factory zones, reflecting a surge of investment, hastened by President Donald Trump’s tariff hikes, that are reshaping the region.

    The economy has profited from friction between Washington and Beijing as factories shifted out of China, joining earlier waves of foreign investment by the Japanese and South Koreans that have made Vietnam a global manufacturing hub. But rising labor costs, worker shortages and inadequate infrastructure are exposing the limits to its rapid rise.

    With rivals like Indonesia and the Philippines competing hard for new projects, Vietnam is trying to climb into higher-value manufacturing and expand export markets to maintain that momentum. That effort is evident in Bac Ninh.

    Traditionally a center for artisans, Bac Ninh’s first boom began around 2008 when Samsung built its first phone factory there, turning Vietnam into its largest offshore manufacturing base.

    Now, Chinese companies are pouring in as they diversify their factory locations to skirt U.S. tariffs and other trade restrictions. After Hanoi and Beijing normalized ties in the 1990s, inflows of Chinese investment began to pick up as Chinese firms in places like Bac Ninh tapped Vietnam’s electronics supply chain, labor force and supportive local governments, often aided by Chinese-speaking intermediaries who smooth paperwork and logistics.

    But Vietnam is too small to replace China, whose economy is 40 times larger, as the world’s factory floor. To try to keep up, its leaders are building new infrastructure, including a highway to the Chinese border that has cut travel time by more than an hour. A railway will connect Hanoi to Haiphong — Vietnam’s largest seaport — and then the border town of Lao Cai.

    On Dec. 19, Bac Ninh broke ground on the expansion of an industrial zone for high-tech manufacturing, including electronics, pharmaceuticals and clean energy. It’s part of a synchronized nationwide push in which Vietnam launched 234 major projects worth more than $129 billion just weeks before a pivotal National Party Congress in January, when leaders will decide the country’s political leadership and economic direction.

    In Bac Ninh’s downtown, a convenience store bears the name Tmall, after Alibaba’s flagship online marketplace. Signs in Chinese advertise services for investors. Chinese–Vietnamese language schools have opened to help locals and Chinese to learn each others’ languages.

    But as Chinese companies compete for the best labor and other resources, costs are rising for the “China plus one” strategy of moving factories out of China to other locations, for example, Apple’s shift into India.

    “It is becoming difficult to recruit workers,” said Peng, who works at a telecoms equipment company that moved from China’s southern technology hub of Shenzhen. He gave only one name because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

    Labor costs have jumped 10%–15% since 2024, he said, “And we expect them to keep rising.”

    Vietnam still need technology, equipment and expertise from China, which had created “the best manufacturing ecosystem,” said Jacob Rothman, co-founder and CEO of China-based Velong Enterprises, which makes grill tools and kitchen gadgets and has shifted some production to Southeast Asian countries including Cambodia and Vietnam.

    Supply chains and manufacturers in China have benefited from decades of government support, large-scale investment and its huge population, Rothman said. “You can’t recreate that overnight.”

    Brian Bourke, global chief commercial officer at U.S.-based SEKO Logistics, said while factories making footwear, furniture and technology are still relocating to Vietnam, it lags China in infrastructure and logistics capabilities.

    Some of those limits are surfacing in boomtowns like Bac Ninh, where firms are trying to lure workers with higher wages and bonuses, a box of instant noodles on their first day and bus fares if they commute from another city, according to state media.

    Few countries have benefitted more from Trump’s trade war than Vietnam, whose biggest export market is still the U.S. In 2024, Vietnam ran a $123.5 billion surplus with the U.S., the third largest behind China and Mexico. That irked Trump, who threatened a 46% import tax on Vietnamese goods before settling on 20%.

    The two countries are still working toward a deal to keep most tariffs at 20%. Vietnam has offered broad preferential access for U.S. products, the White House said in October. So far, it has largely absorbed the tariffs, running a trade surplus of $121.6 billion in January-November 2025.

    The agreement in October by Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to a year-long trade truce and lower average tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S. to about 47% helped ease some concerns. But persisting uncertainty over tariffs and other trade restrictions means companies aren’t just trying to shift factories out of China but to spread them across several countries, said Frederic Neumann, chief Asia economist at HSBC.

    Even with lower U.S. tariffs on China, the calculus still favors moving to Southeast Asia where manufacturing inefficiencies add only about 10% in cost. But while large corporations can shift production easily, smaller firms may struggle to fit a new factory with expensive equipment.

    “(The) race to move outside of China is still happening, and it’s accelerating,” Rothman said.

    Vietnam is still attracting ample foreign investment. Cumulative foreign investment topped $28.5 billion as of September, up 15% from last year. But scrutiny of Vietnam’s role as a hub for tariff-dodging transshipments has some manufacturers hedging their bets.

    One of SEKO Logistics’ customers has shifted some of its furniture making to India, not wanting to “put all their eggs in Vietnam,” Bourke said.

    Countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, which missed the early gains Vietnam captured, are promoting themselves as alternative manufacturing bases. In the Philippines, a new law allows foreign investors to lease private land for up to 99 years to attract long-term commercial and industrial investment.

    Vietnam has a goal of becoming rich by 2045. It aims to become Asia’s next “tiger economy,” following export powerhouses like South Korea and Taiwan by shifting from low-cost assembly work to manufacture higher-value products like electronics and clean energy equipment.

    It’s offering incentives like tax breaks on imported machinery and discounted rents to help factory suppliers upgrade and modernize. About a third still use non-automated equipment and only about 10% use robots on their production lines.

    The country also is trying to reduce its dependence on the U.S. market by expanding exports to the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and India. Overseas trade offices have been asked to share market intelligence and promote products made in Vietnam.

    Vietnam knows that rising costs and tougher competition will test how far it — and places like Bac Ninh — can climb. Announcing hundreds of projects in December, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh framed the stakes: Vietnam must “reach far into the ocean, delve deep underground and soar high into space.”

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    Chan reported from Hong Kong. Associated Press researcher Yu Bing in Beijing contributed.

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    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • China factory activity picks up in December as orders rebound ahead of holidays

    BANGKOK — Chinese factory activity expanded for the first time in eight months in December, as orders picked up ahead of holidays and builders rushed to finish projects, according to surveys released Wednesday.

    The official purchasing managers index for manufacturing, a monthly survey of companies, rose to 50.1 this month, the National Bureau of Statistics reported. That was just above the 50 cut off for expansion versus contraction on a scale up to 100. Another, private sector, survey also was at 50.1 for December.

    The better-than-expected readings partly reflect easing pressure due to an extended truce in trade tensions with the U.S. They also suggest manufacturers ramped up production ahead of New Year holidays, when many companies close for days. China’s Lunar New Year falls in mid-February this year.

    In comments to a new year’s gathering carried Wednesday by China’s state media, President Xi Jinping, vowed to promote “high-quality development” and to carry out “more positive macroeconomic policies” while ensuring social harmony and stability.

    The world’s second largest economy is forecast to grow at a pace just below the official target of about 5% this year, supported by strong activity in high-tech industries and exports. The official PMI for high-tech manufacturing stood at 52.5 in December, up 2.4 percentage points from the previous month.

    The report said the PMIs for both equipment manufacturing and the consumer goods industry reached 50.4.

    The separate report by RatingDog, a Chinese credit research and analysis company based in the southern city of Shenzhen, said that despite an increase in overall orders, new export sales fell slightly and hiring weakened.

    “Overall, the manufacturing sector regained growth at the end of 2025,” RatingDog’s founder Yao Yu said in a statement. “However, the improvement was marginal, with the impact of promotions and new products appearing impulse-driven and their sustainability requiring observation.”

    The National Statistic Bureau said the PMI measures for food, textiles, clothing and electronics were above a relatively strong 53.

    However, while large manufacturers increased their output, factory activity for the small and mid-sized enterprises that account for the lion’s share of employment in China remained in contractionary territory. As consumers cut back on spending, conditions for retailers and restaurants also deteriorated, the report said.

    Some economists believe China’s economy is growing more slowly than official figures suggest. Its leaders are grappling with long-term challenges including a yearslong slump in the country’s property sector and excess capacity in many industries, including automaking, that has led to damaging price wars.

    Higher costs for raw materials, especially for metals, has put pressure on company profit margins, the RatingDog report said. It noted that exporters had raised prices for the first time in three months to help offset those higher costs.

    The upturn in activity may be short-lived as it appears to be helped by a slight increase in government spending, Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics said in a report.

    “The big picture is that the structural headwinds from the property downturn and industrial overcapacity are set to persist in 2026 and there appears to be limited appetite among policymakers for a big increase in demand-side stimulus,” he said.

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  • iRobot files for bankruptcy protection; will be private under restructuring

    Roomba maker iRobot has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, but says that it doesn’t expect any disruptions to devices as the more than 30-year-old company is taken private under a restructuring process

    Roomba maker iRobot has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, but says that it doesn’t expect any disruptions to devices as the more than 30-year-old company is taken private under a restructuring process.

    IRobot, which became well known for its robotic vacuums, has struggled of late, dealing with increased competition, layoffs and a declining stock price. In 2022 Amazon announced that it had agreed to buy iRobot for about $1.7 billion, but that deal was called off last year. Amazon blamed “undue and disproportionate regulatory hurdles” after the European Union signaled its objection to the transaction.

    Amazon said at the time that it would pay iRobot a previously agreed termination fee of $94 million and iRobot said that it would undergo a restructuring to help stabilize the company.

    iRobot said Sunday that it is now being acquired by Picea through a court-supervised process. Picea, or Shenzhen PICEA Robotics Co., Ltd., is iRobot’s primary contract manufacturer.. With facilities in China and Vietnam, Picea has built and sold more than 20 million robotic vacuum cleaners.

    “The transaction will strengthen our financial position and will help deliver continuity for our consumers, customers, and partners,” iRobot CEO Gary Cohen said in a statement.

    iRobot said it will continue to operate as normal during the Chapter 11 process and doesn’t expect any disruption to its app functionality, customer programs, global partners, supply chain relationships, or ongoing product support.

    The Bedford, Massachusetts-based anticipates completing the prepackaged chapter 11 process by February.

    In premarket trading, iRobot shares slid nearly 70% to $1.31.

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  • South Korean solar firm cuts pay and hours for Georgia workers as US officials detain imports

    A South Korean solar company says it will temporarily reduce pay and working hours for about 1,000 of its 3,000 employees in Georgia because U.S. customs officials have been detaining imported components for solar panels

    ATLANTA — A South Korean solar company says it will temporarily reduce pay and working hours for about 1,000 of its 3,000 employees in Georgia because U.S. customs officials have been detaining imported components needed to make solar panels.

    Qcells, a unit of South Korea’s Hanwha Solutions, said Friday that it will also lay off 300 workers from staffing agencies at its plants in Dalton and Cartersville, both northwest of Atlanta.

    The company says U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been detaining imported components at ports on suspicion that they contain materials that may have been made with forced labor in China, meaning it can’t run its solar panel assembly lines at full strength.

    Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced in August that her department was stepping up enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a 2021 law that restricts Chinese goods made with forced labor from entering the U.S. Published reports indicate that U.S. officials began detaining solar cells made by Qcells in June. A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection couldn’t immediately answer questions about Qcells on Friday.

    Qcells says none of its materials or components are made with forced labor or even come from China. Spokesperson Marta Stoepker said the company maintains “robust supply chain due diligence measures” and “very detailed documentation,” which has been successful in getting some shipments released.

    “Our latest supply chain is sourced completely outside of China and our legacy supply chains contain no material from Xinjiang province based on third party audits and supplier guarantees,” Stoepker said.

    She said Qcells is continuing to cooperate and expects to resume full production in the coming weeks and months.

    “Although our supply chain operations are beginning to normalize, today we shared with our employees that HR actions must be taken to improve operational efficiency until production capacity returns to normal levels,” Stoepker said in a statement.

    Qcells has said it pays workers an average of about $53,000 a year. Workers will retain full benefits during furloughs.

    Qcells is completing a $2.3 billion plant in Cartersville that will let it take polysilicon refined in Washington state and make ingots, wafers and solar cells — the building blocks of finished solar modules. That will allow it to reduce imports of solar modules. The company has said it will finish the plant even though President Donald Trump and the Republican Congress dismantled most of the tax credits for buying solar panels earlier this year.

    “Our commitment to building the entire solar supply chain in the United States remains,” Stoepker said. “We will soon be back on track with the full force of our Georgia team delivering American-made energy to communities around the country.”

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  • Explosion at Mississippi chemical plant causes ammonia leak, evacuations

    YAZOO CITY, Miss. — An explosion at a hydrogen and nitrogen product manufacturer in Mississippi on Wednesday caused an ammonia leak and forced nearby residents to evacuate, officials said.

    Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said in a post on the social platform X that emergency officials from across the state were responding to the anhydrous ammonia leak at CF Industries’ plant north of Yazoo City.

    No deaths or injuries have been reported, he said.

    “Thank you to all of Mississippi’s first responders and emergency managers for quickly responding to the leak,” he said.

    Photos and video posted online show a large plume of yellowish smoke rising above the facility, which includes an ammonia plant and four nitric acid plants, among other things.

    The facility is able to store about 48,000 tons of ammonia, although the exact amount there when the explosion took place was not immediately clear.

    CF Industries said in a statement that there are no injuries, and “all employees and contractors on site at the time of the incident have been safely accounted for.”

    Andre Robinson, who lives about a half-mile (800 meters) from the facility, said he and his son were getting ready to make gumbo when he heard what sounded like a sonic boom or a tree crashing on his house.

    “There was a boom and then the house shook,” he said.

    When he looked outside, Robinson said he saw smoke rising from the facility and started to smell a strong scent of ammonia.

    “We’re used to the ammonia smell, but not that bad,” he said, adding that his family has since evacuated to Jackson.

    Part of U.S. Route 49E was temporarily closed, according to the Mississippi Department of Transportation.

    The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality said in a post on X that “air monitoring operations are underway and will continue as long as necessary to ensure public safety.”

    Anhydrous ammonia is used as a fertilizer to help provide nitrogen for corn and wheat plants, according to the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. If a person touches it when it is in gas or liquid form, they could be burned.

    Yazoo City is a small community about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Jackson.

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  • NATO member Romania signs agreement with Germany’s Rheinmetall to build a gunpowder plant

    BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — NATO member Romania signed an agreement Monday with German defense company Rheinmetall to build a gunpowder factory in central Romania, as Europe races to rearm itself in the face of an increasingly provocative Russia.

    After signing the deal, Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan hailed the joint venture between the Romanian state and Europe’s largest arms producer as a sign that Romania is “emerging as a player with potential in the defense industry of Southeast Europe.”

    Construction of the 535 million-euro ($616 million) plant in the town of Victoria in Brasov County is expected to start in 2026, take three years to complete and create about 700 local jobs, he said. Romania will seek to finance part of its contributions through the European SAFE mechanism to encourage defense readiness.

    “After many years in which our defense industry was in little demand, Romania is entering a new stage because of the security situation in Eastern Europe,” Bolojan said. “I’m glad Rheinmetall sees us as an important and serious partner and is strengthening its presence in Romania.”

    Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger said the ammunition powder to be produced at the factory is “needed worldwide and especially in Europe,” and will make Romania a key player in the continent’s defense ecosystem.

    “The strategy is to make Romania an integral part of the European ecosystem,” Papperger said. “Romania will also be an integral part of the NATO ecosystem.”

    Since Russia launched its full invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Romania has played an increasingly prominent role in NATO. It has donated a Patriot missile system to Ukraine and opened an international training hub for F-16 jet pilots from allied countries, including Ukraine.

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  • China’s next 5-year plan puts focus on high-tech and consumers

    HONG KONG — China’s leaders have vowed to reduce its reliance on foreign advanced technology and spur stronger domestic demand as it weathers “high winds” amid elevated trade tensions with the U.S.

    An outline of the ruling Communist Party’s blueprint for the next five years was laid out in a 5,000-word communique released Thursday after a four-day top level meeting in Beijing, just days ahead of planned talks between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump.

    Five-year plans are a throwback to the days of Soviet-style central planning. China still relies heavily on them to map out policy priorities and decide on funding. Party “plenum” meetings like the one held this week also are used to rally the party rank-and-file around Xi’s leadership.

    Thursday’s announcement signaled no major policy shifts. Despite mounting trade tensions, China intends to remain a global manufacturing power while sustaining strong economic growth at home.

    China is facing “profound” changes and growing uncertainties, said the communique released by state media.

    It does not refer directly to the trade war between Beijing and Washington, but warns of rising “uncertainties and unforeseen factors”.

    “We must proactively identify, respond to, and steer changes… and dare to brave high winds, choppy waters, and even dangerous storms,” it says.

    Han Wenxiu, a senior party official overseeing policy making in financial, economic and rural affairs, told reporters Friday that China is well placed to handle such risks, saying “there is always opportunity in crisis and crisis can be turned into opportunity.”

    Chi Lo, an Asia Pacific senior market strategist at BNP Paribas Asset Management, said the emphasis on substantial improvements in scientific and technological self-reliance likely reflects greater confidence that China is less vulnerable to pressure from the trade war.

    The party vowed to achieve “markedly stronger” international influence, economic and national strength by 2035 and to “safeguard the multilateral trading system,” portraying Beijing as a defender of free trade, noted Leah Fahy, a China economist at Capital Economics.

    China’s communique emphasized the need to build a “robust” domestic market by expanding domestic demand and increasing consumer spending.

    A downturn in the property sector that began while China was still in the midst of disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic has sapped consumer confidence, hurting household wealth and causing widespread layoffs.

    To try to spur demand, the government has encouraged investment in more modern factories and equipment and paid subsidies to people who replace old appliances and vehicles with newer ones. But manufacturing capacity exceeds demand in many industries. That has caused damaging price wars and led companies to boost exports, in turn adding to trade friction.

    Even with strong government support, the economy grew 4.8%, the slowest pace in a year in the last quarter. And factory activity shrank for the sixth consecutive month in September, official data showed, as domestic demand remained sluggish.

    China’s leaders have kept their goal of attaining the status of a “mid-level developed country” and doubling the size of the economy in 2020 by 2035.

    That implies an average annual growth rate of about 4-5% in the next decade, said Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at ING Bank.

    China is the world’s biggest manufacturer, accounting for roughly 30% of global manufacturing output and about a quarter of its overall economy. The new 5-year plan calls for keeping manufacturing at an “appropriate level” with advanced industries as the backbone, according to the communique.

    That signals China’s focus on the manufacturing sector “will remain a top priority, even in the face of overcapacity (and) price wars”, said Capital Economics’s Leah.

    Over the years, Chinese manufacturing has progressed from labor-intensive, low-cost production to higher-value products including electric vehicles, robotics and batteries. In coming years, the emphasis will be on advanced manufacturing, said Robin Xing, chief China economist at Morgan Stanley.

    That includes areas such as quantum technology, biomanufacturing, hydrogen and nuclear fusion energy, artificial intelligence and next generation mobile communications, said Zheng Shanjie, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, Beijing’s main planning agency.

    “These industries are ready to take off,” Zheng said. “It means that in the next 10 years we will build another high tech industry in China and this will inject continued impetus to our efforts to achieve Chinese modernization.”

    Zheng noted that building a stronger domestic market is a strategic priority.

    “The economies of major countries are all driven by domestic demand and the market is the most scarce resource in today’s world,” he said.

    It’s unclear if China’s commitment to catalyzing more consumer spending and domestic investment will make much of a dent in its exports.

    China’s share of EV sales globally reached 46% in 2023, according to Morgan Stanley, and major Chinese companies like BYD and CATL have taken up global leading positions in battery technology and production.

    China holds a pivotal role in global supply chains and its strategic control of access to rare earths, materials used in many products.

    “The Chinese government sees manufacturing as a core issue in security and geopolitical leverage over other countries,” added Gary Ng, a senior economist at Natixis.

    The four-day plenum was marked by relatively low attendance.

    Out of 205 full members in the elite Communist Party central committee, only 168 were there, along with 147 of its 171 alternate members, according to the communique.

    That reflects an “unprecedented proportion of central committee members are in political trouble” amid Xi’s deep purges within the party, said Neil Thomas, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.

    The biggest personnel changes were the promotion of Gen. Zhang Shengmin to be China’s second highest ranking general. He replaced He Weidong, who was ousted from the party along with eight other senior officials in Xi’s latest anti-corruption drive.

    The changes indicate an emphasis on political loyalty and anti-corruption under Xi, said Sun of King’s College London. As the party continues to centralize power, “the political position faced by Xi and his dominance within the party is still relatively secure” said Sun.

    ___ Wu reported from Bangkok and Moritsugu reported from Beijing. Associated Press researchers Yu Bing and Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed.

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  • In Japan and South Korea, Trump will promote big investments. But the details are still not clear

    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is going to Japan and South Korea next week to promote an epic financial windfall — at least $900 billion in investments for U.S. factories, a natural gas pipeline and other projects.

    Japan and South Korea made those financial commitments in August to try to get Trump to ratchet down his planned tariff rates from 25% to 15%. But as the U.S. president is set to depart Friday night for Asia, the pledges are more of a loose end than money in the bank for American industry.

    Japan pledged $550 billion in investments, but it wants the money to benefit its own companies, making that a condition in a memorandum released in September. As of Monday, Japan has a new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, who has expressed respect for Trump but is operating in an untested coalition government.

    South Korea offered $350 billion — but wants a swap line for U.S. dollars to facilitate its investments and seeks to fund the transactions through loan guarantees. Otherwise, the commitment could sink its own economy.

    The investment arrangements are unusual for trade frameworks, and Trump maintains that he will personally direct how the money is spent, enabling him to pick winners and losers. Weeks of talks have yet to produce any breakthroughs on how the investments would go forward even though both nations want to preserve their relationship with America.

    Still, ahead of the trip, Trump was radiating optimism that his tariffs had forced investments to fuel what he believes will be an economic boom starting next year.

    “We’ve done well, as you know, with Japan, with South Korea,” Trump told Republican senators Tuesday. “Without the tariffs, you could have never made the deal. I’ll tell you what. Tariffs equal national security.”

    For Trump, the investments are also about demonstrating America’s strength before a planned meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping while he is in South Korea. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on Monday described Trump’s strategy in part as “encouraging allied investment in America’s industrial future” to counter Chinese manufacturers.

    But Japan and South Korea are also competing against China — which is pivoting aggressively into electric vehicles, computer chips and other technologies. There is a risk that mandating investment in the U.S. could weaken allies that are closer geographically to China, said Christopher Smart, managing partner at the Arbroath Group, a geopolitical strategy firm.

    “They need to invest in their own countries,” said Smart, who was a senior economic aide in the Obama White House. He said Trump was “going to extract investment money” from the countries while also erecting “tariff walls” that could make it harder for them to sell goods in America, a rather lopsided view of how alliances work.

    Few experts believe Japan and South Korea would agree with the Trump administration’s framing that their U.S. investments are a way to compete against China.

    “It is really about lowering tariffs and avoiding Trump’s wrath,” said Andrew Yeo, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Asia Policy Studies.

    There is an expectation that Japan and South Korea both want to resolve any hurdles on the investments and will take steps to achieve “progress” in talks with Trump, said William Chou, a senior fellow focused on Japan at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank.

    Chou pointed to Nippon Steel’s agreement to purchase U.S. Steel this year as an example of how Japan can work with the Trump administration. The president had initially opposed the merger, but later backed it with an agreement that gave the U.S. government some control over the acquired company.

    Similarly, the memorandum of understanding on Japan’s $550 million investment would also give the U.S. government input on how the money would be spent. It provides for a committee led by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to propose investments, giving Japan 45 days to respond, with the understanding that the deals would give preference to Japanese contractors and suppliers.

    “Japan came through with the paperwork,” Lutnick said in a September CNBC interview. “They gave us $550 billion to invest for the benefit of America, build the Alaska pipeline, build nuclear power plants, make your grid better, do generic antibiotics in America.”

    South Korea has yet to finalize a written agreement with the U.S. on the $350 billion investment, a problem as higher U.S. tariff rates still apply to its autos. South Korean officials have balked at U.S. demands for upfront payments, which they say would put the country at risk of a financial crisis. Instead, they have proposed delivering the investment through loans and loan guarantees.

    Returning to South Korea on Sunday after talks in Washington, Kim Yong-beom, presidential chief of staff for policy, told reporters there had been progress, although he declined to provide specifics.

    “We’re nearing an agreement that there should be mutually beneficial (deals) that the Republic of Korea can endure,” Kim said. “The U.S. fully recognizes and understands possible shocks on the foreign exchange market in the Republic of Korea.”

    The proposed South Korean investment represents more than 80% of its foreign currency reserves. South Korea has proposed a currency swap with the U.S. to ease potential financial instability caused by the investment, but no agreement has been reached yet.

    The Sept. 4 immigration raid by Trump’s government on a Hyundai auto plant in Georgia, causing the detention of more than 300 South Koreans, has also strained the relationship. It came less than two weeks after Trump met South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, and led to calls in South Korea to ensure that its workers operating in the U.S. have legal protections.

    Since that raid, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry has said the United States has now agreed to allow in South Korean workers on short-term visas or a visa waiver program to help build industrial sites in America.

    Lee has said South Korean companies will likely hesitate to make further investments in the U.S. unless it improves its visa system.

    “When you build a factory or install equipment at a factory, you need technicians, but the United States doesn’t have that workforce and yet they won’t issue visas to let our people stay and do the work,” Lee said last month.

    Trump has said his tariffs will spur new investments that ultimately will produce jobs for U.S. citizens.

    “Without tariffs, it’s a slog for this country, a big slog,” Trump said Wednesday.

    ___

    Kim reported from Seoul.

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  • After winning Trump’s $20 billion, President Milei must win votes as Argentine industry reels

    BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The factory floor used to roar.

    Walking around his textile mill in southern Buenos Aires, Luciano Galfione pointed out the up-to-the-minute machines that once whirred and clattered as 200 employees churned out fabric to be transformed into athleisure and other apparel for Argentina’s vast middle class.

    But on Monday afternoon, the factory was so quiet that Galfione’s footsteps rang clear through the compound. A handful of workers at the Galfione Group factory in Argentina’s capital spooled yarn and dyed cloth.

    Almost two years after libertarian President Javier Milei stormed to power on a promise to rescue Argentina’s crisis-stricken economy through harsh austerity and free-market reforms, falling orders and surging competition have forced Galfione to cut operations by 80%, lay off or suspend half his staff and use his own savings to keep his family’s 78-year-old firm afloat.

    Other companies have simply closed their doors. Over 17,600 businesses — among them 1,800 manufacturers and 380 textile companies — have folded in the last year and a half, according to Fundación Pro Tejer, a nonprofit representing textile manufacturers.

    “We’re seeing an industry in crisis, and it’s about to go bankrupt,” said Galfione, who also runs Fundación Pro Tejer. “Not only textiles. Textiles are just the first and fastest to fall.”

    As Argentina heads to Oct. 26 midterm elections widely seen as a referendum on Milei’s policies, Galfione’s troubles reflect bigger shocks jolting the country. The economy has sputtered. Cheap imports have gutted manufacturing. Spending has stumbled, squeezed by higher unemployment and lower wages.

    The turmoil engulfing Argentine financial markets began when voters in the manufacturing belt of suburban Buenos Aires — a region that for decades represented the dream of national industry nurtured by tariff protection — punished Milei in a provincial election last month.

    The scale of Milei’s humiliation triggered a sharp peso sell-off and sent officials scrambling to secure $20 billion in financing from a friendly Trump administration.

    President Donald Trump, who sees a kindred spirit and fellow culture warrior in Argentina’s chain saw wielding leader, shocked Argentines and Americans alike Tuesday by warning that the $20 billion was contingent on Milei’s success in what is shaping up to be a hotly contested legislative election.

    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went further on Wednesday, saying that the U.S. could tap investment funds to provide Argentina with up to $40 billion.

    “Just helping a great philosophy take over a great country,” Trump explained after meeting Milei at the White House.

    Thousands of miles away, many Argentines are losing patience with that philosophy.

    Those interviewed on the streets of Buenos Aires Wednesday had no illusions about Trump’s lifeline fixing their problems.

    “Let’s say they give us this money from abroad. What am I going to do with it?” asked Walter Willatt, a 56-year-old newsstand owner whose son was just laid off from a local Toyota dealership. “If the economy revives it will have to be through domestic consumption.”

    Over a year ago, markets cheered as Milei fulfilled his flagship promise to reduce the runway inflation that he inherited from his populist predecessors. Many Argentines — who had grown accustomed to supermarkets revising prices upward everyday — hailed Milei’s program as a miraculous outbreak of normalcy in a notoriously topsy-turvy economy.

    But today, price stability is old news as Argentines contend with a lengthening list of worries.

    Unemployment in Buenos Aires Province climbed to 9.8% in the second quarter of this year, compared to 7.3% during the same period in 2023, before Milei entered office. Salaries nationwide haven’t kept up with inflation. Milei’s major subsidy cuts mean that even if prices have stabilized, Argentines are paying more for bus fares, utility bills and healthcare.

    “Milei’s challenge is that the public now assumes inflation has gone down, that’s a given,” said Marcelo J. García, Director for the Americas for the Horizon Engage political risk consultancy firm. “There’s a new generation of demands. The economy needs to grow, there needs to be job creation. I’m not sure that government is prepared to meet those demands.”

    Rodolfo Núñez, a 43-year-old former factory worker in Pilar, outside Buenos Aires, said he voted for Milei in 2023 because he wanted change. Then the blows began to fall. His daughter’s epilepsy medication shot up in price. His retired parents struggled to afford groceries on their $300-a-month pension.

    On Aug. 29, the ceramic factory where he worked for the last 18 years shut down. The company, ILVA, fired all the plant’s 300 workers in a WhatsApp message that cited the economic crisis, leaving Núñez and his colleagues in limbo, without severance pay or health insurance.

    ILVA did not respond to a request for comment.

    “What Milei promised, he didn’t do. He messed with retirees, he messed with my daughter and he messed with the workers,” he said from outside the padlocked ILVA factory where dozens of dismissed employees now camp out in protest, the air filled with smoke from burning tires and roasting chicken.

    “What do I tell my landlord? That I can’t pay her next month? Where am I going to go?”

    Núñez said he voted for the opposition in last month’s regional elections.

    Government statistics show poor and middle-class households cutting back on all but essential spending. Clothing sales, for instance, fell 10.9% in September compared to the year before. The collapsed consumption reverberates down the supply chain.

    “We’re reducing costs as much as we can, trying to survive with very low production and without making money,” said Alejandro Schvartz, owner of Visuar, a household appliance vendor and producer whose sales dropped roughly 25% in the first half of this year.

    Other policies that Milei depends on to fight inflation — such as high interest rates and central bank interventions to defend the peso — further erode the competitiveness of Argentine industry.

    The peso has become so strong that shoppers now get more bang for their buck by splurging anywhere but Argentina — from Chile’s malls to Brazil’s beaches.

    Upon taking office, Milei tore down trade barriers and relaxed import restrictions, opening Argentina to an avalanche of cheaper industrial and textile products. Chinese e-commerce companies like Temu and Shein pay no import duties for products valued below $400.

    But Milei maintained sky-high taxes for Argentine manufacturers, giving local companies no choice but to pass on the cost to consumers.

    “This is not a fair playing field,” said Pablo Yeramian, director of the Argentine textile company Norfabril, who has already cut 20% of his staff.

    As scenes of Milei beaming beside Trump in Washington flashed across Argentine televisions on Tuesday, some manufacturers couldn’t help wishing that the similarity between the two presidents was, in at least one way, more than just rhetorical.

    “No developed country in the world surrenders its industrial sovereignty,” said Galfione, pointing to Trump’s “Made in America” ambitions for the U.S. “I think instead of doing what the U.S. tells us, we should do what they do.”

    ___

    Associated Press writer Andrea Vulcano in Buenos Aires, Argentina, contributed to this report.

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  • Trump says the US has secured $17 trillion in new investments. The real number is likely much less

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The economic boom promised by President Donald Trump centers on a single number: $17 trillion.

    That’s the sum of new investments that Trump claims to have generated with his tariffs, income tax cuts and aggressive salesmanship of CEOs, financiers, tech titans, prime ministers, presidents and other rulers. The $17 trillion is supposed to fund new factories, new technologies, more jobs, higher incomes and faster economic growth.

    “Under eight months of Trump, we’ve already secured commitments of $17 trillion coming in,” the president said in a speech last month. “There’s never been any country that’s done anything like that.”

    But based on statements from various companies, foreign countries and the White House’s own website, that figure appears to be exaggerated, highly speculative and far higher than the actual sum. The White House website lists total investments at $8.8 trillion, though that figure appears to be padded with some investment commitments made during Joe Biden’s presidency.

    The White House didn’t lay out the math after multiple requests as to how Trump calculated $17 trillion in investment commitments. But the issue goes beyond Trump’s hyperbolic talk to his belief that the brute force of tariffs and shaming of companies can deliver economic results, a strategy that could go sideways for him politically if the tough talk fails to translate into more jobs and higher incomes.

    Just 37% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, according to a September poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. That’s down from a peak of 56% in early 2020 during Trump’s first term — a memory he relied upon when courting voters in last year’s election.

    Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute of International Economics, said the public commitments announced by Trump do represent a “meaningful increase” — but one that amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars, not trillions. Even then, that comes with long-term costs as countries might be less inclined to invest with the U.S. after being threatened to do so.

    “It is a national security mistake because you’re turning allies into colonies of a sort — you’re forcibly extracting from them things that they don’t see as entirely in their interest,” Posen said. “Twisting the arms of governments to then twist the arms of their own businesses is not going to get you the payoff you want.”

    Trump banking on foreign countries making good on promises

    The Trump administration is betting that tariffs are an effective tool to prod other countries and international companies to invest in the United States, a big stick that other administrations failed to wield. Trump’s pitch to voters is that he will play a role in directly managing the investment commitments made by foreign countries — and that the allocation of that money starting next year will revive what has been a flagging job market.

    “The difference between hypothetical investments and ground being broken on new factories and facilities is good leadership and sound policy,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai.

    The White House said that Japan will invest $1 trillion, largely at Trump’s direction. The European Union will commit $600 billion. The United Arab Emirates made commitments of $1.4 trillion over 10 years. Qatar pledged $1.2 trillion. Saudi Arabia intends to pony up $600 billion, India $500 billion and South Korea $450 billion, among others.

    The challenge is the precise terms of those investments have yet to be fully codified and released to the public, and some numbers are under dispute, potentially fuzzy math or, in the case of Qatar, more than five times the annual gross domestic product of the entire country. The White House maintains that Qatar is good for the money because it produces oil.

    South Korea already has misgivings about its investment commitment, which is $100 billion lower than what the White House claims, after immigration agents raided a Hyundai plant under construction in Georgia and arrested Korean citizens. There are also concerns that an investment that large without a better way to exchange currencies with the U.S. could hurt South Korea’s economy.

    “From what I’ve seen, these commitments are worth about as much as the paper they’re not written down on,” said Jared Bernstein, who was the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Biden White House.

    As for the $600 billion committed by European companies, that’s based on those businesses having “expressed interest” and having stated “intentions” to do so through 2029 rather than an overt concession, according to European Union documents.

    Still too soon to see any investment impact in overall economy

    So far, there has yet to be a notable boost in business investment as a percentage of U.S. gross domestic product. As a share of the overall economy, business investment during the first six months of Trump’s presidency has been consistently bouncing around 14%, just as it was before the pandemic.

    But economists also note that Trump is double-counting and relying on investments that were initially announced during the Biden administration or investments that were already likely to occur because of the artificial intelligence build out.

    For example, the White House lists a $16 billion investment by computer chipmaker Global Foundries. But of that sum, more than $13 billion was announced during the Biden administration and supported by $1.6 billion in grants by the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, as well as other state and federal incentives.

    Similarly, the White House is banking on $200 billion being invested by the chipmaker Micron, but at least $120 billion of that was announced during the Biden era.

    ‘The tariffs played a big role’

    For their part, White House officials largely credit Trump’s tariffs — like those imposed on Oct. 1 on kitchen cabinets, large trucks and pharmaceutical drugs — for forcing companies to make investments in the U.S., saying that the risk of additional import taxes if countries and companies fail to deliver on their promises will ensure that the promised cash comes into the economy.

    On Tuesday, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla endorsed this approach after his pharmaceutical drug company received a three-year grace period on tariffs and announced $70 billion in investments in the U.S.

    “The president was absolutely right,” Bourla said. “Tariffs is the most powerful tool to motivate behaviors.”

    “The tariffs played a big role,” Trump added.

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  • Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC sees nearly 40% jump in its net profit thanks to the AI boom

    Taiwan’s leading computer chip maker, TSMC, has reported its net profit surged nearly 40% in the last quarter, boosted by the surge in use of artificial intelligence

    HONG KONG — HONG KONG (AP) — Taiwan’s leading computer chip maker, TSMC, said Thursday that its net profit surged nearly 40% in the last quarter, boosted by the surge in use of artificial intelligence.

    Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. is the world’s biggest semiconductor manufacturer. It reported a net profit of a record 452.3 billion new Taiwan dollars ($15 billion) in the July-September quarter, higher than analysts’ forecasts.

    The company earlier said its revenue jumped 30% year-on-year in the last quarter.

    TSMC has been building chip fabrication plants in the United States and Japan to help hedge against risks from China-U.S. trade tensions. The chipmaker is a major supplier to companies such as Apple and Nvidia.

    “Demand for TSMC’s products is unyielding,” Morningstar analysts wrote in a note this month. “Given TSMC’s dominance, we doubt the company would be hindered if it faced tariffs on shipments to U.S. customers. We expect AI demand to stay resilient.”

    U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick proposed last month that computer chip production be divided 50-50 between Taiwan and the U.S. Taiwan — where the majority of global chip manufacturing is currently based — rejected that idea.

    The company has committed $100 billion in U.S. investments, including building new factories in Arizona, on top of $65 billion that it pledged earlier.

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  • Powerful blast at a Tennessee military explosives plant rattles homes miles away

    McEWEN, Tenn. — McEWEN, Tenn. (AP) — A powerful blast ripped through a military explosives manufacturing plant in rural Tennessee on Friday morning, rattling homes miles away and bringing emergency responders to the scene, authorities and residents said.

    The explosion happened at Accurate Energetic Systems near the town of Bucksnort, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) southwest of Nashville, the Hickman County Sheriff’s Office said. The agency asked people in a social media post to avoid the area to allow responders to do their work.

    Emergency responders were not yet able to go in because there continue to be explosions, Hickman County Advanced EMT David Stewart told The Associated Press by telephone. He said he didn’t have any details on whether anyone had been hurt.

    Accurate Energetic Systems, based in nearby McEwan, did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment Friday morning.

    Video from the scene showed a burning debris field with smoke billowing into the air. WTVF-TV in Nashville broadcast images of debris strewn about the site, with damaged vehicles in a parking lot. The news station said it received calls from people in the area who felt a large explosion.

    Residents in Lobelville, more than a 20-minute drive from the manufacturer, said they felt their homes shake and some people captured the loud boom of the explosion on their home cameras.

    The blast rattled Gentry Stover from his sleep.

    “I thought the house had collapsed with me inside of it,” he told the AP by phone. “I live very close to Accurate and I realized about 30 seconds after I woke up that it had to have been that.”

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  • Trump says US has secured $17T in new investments. The number is likely much less.

    WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — The economic boom promised by President Donald Trump centers on a single number: $17 trillion.

    That’s the sum of new investments that Trump claims to have generated with his tariffs, income tax cuts and aggressive salesmanship of CEOs, financiers, tech titans, prime ministers, presidents and other rulers. The $17 trillion is supposed to fund new factories, new technologies, more jobs, higher incomes and faster economic growth.

    “Under eight months of Trump, we’ve already secured commitments of $17 trillion coming in,” the president said in a speech last month. “There’s never been any country that’s done anything like that.”

    But based on statements from various companies, foreign countries and the White House’s own website, that figure appears to be exaggerated, highly speculative and far higher than the actual sum. The White House website lists total investments at $8.8 trillion, though that figure appears to be padded with some investment commitments made during Joe Biden’s presidency.

    The White House didn’t lay out the math after multiple requests as to how Trump calculated $17 trillion in investment commitments. But the issue goes beyond Trump’s hyperbolic talk to his belief that the brute force of tariffs and shaming of companies can deliver economic results, a strategy that could go sideways for him politically if the tough talk fails to translate into more jobs and higher incomes.

    Just 37% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, according to a September poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. That’s down from a peak of 56% in early 2020 during Trump’s first term — a memory he relied upon when courting voters in last year’s election.

    Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute of International Economics, said the public commitments announced by Trump do represent a “meaningful increase” — but one that amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars, not trillions. Even then, that comes with long-term costs as countries might be less inclined to invest with the U.S. after being threatened to do so.

    “It is a national security mistake because you’re turning allies into colonies of a sort — you’re forcibly extracting from them things that they don’t see as entirely in their interest,” Posen said. “Twisting the arms of governments to then twist the arms of their own businesses is not going to get you the payoff you want.”

    The Trump administration is betting that tariffs are an effective tool to prod other countries and international companies to invest in the United States, a big stick that other administrations failed to wield. Trump’s pitch to voters is that he will play a role in directly managing the investment commitments made by foreign countries — and that the allocation of that money starting next year will revive what has been a flagging job market.

    “The difference between hypothetical investments and ground being broken on new factories and facilities is good leadership and sound policy,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai.

    The White House said that Japan will invest $1 trillion, largely at Trump’s direction. The European Union will commit $600 billion. The United Arab Emirates made commitments of $1.4 trillion over 10 years. Qatar pledged $1.2 trillion. Saudi Arabia intends to pony up $600 billion, India $500 billion and South Korea $450 billion, among others.

    The challenge is the precise terms of those investments have yet to be fully codified and released to the public, and some numbers are under dispute, potentially fuzzy math or, in the case of Qatar, more than five times the annual gross domestic product of the entire country. The White House maintains that Qatar is good for the money because it produces oil.

    South Korea already has misgivings about its investment commitment, which is $100 billion lower than what the White House claims, after immigration agents raided a Hyundai plant under construction in Georgia and arrested Korean citizens. There are also concerns that an investment that large without a better way to exchange currencies with the U.S. could hurt South Korea’s economy.

    “From what I’ve seen, these commitments are worth about as much as the paper they’re not written down on,” said Jared Bernstein, who was the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Biden White House.

    As for the $600 billion committed by European companies, that’s based on those businesses having “expressed interest” and having stated “intentions” to do so through 2029 rather than an overt concession, according to European Union documents.

    So far, there has yet to be a notable boost in business investment as a percentage of U.S. gross domestic product. As a share of the overall economy, business investment during the first six months of Trump’s presidency has been consistently bouncing around 14%, just as it was before the pandemic.

    But economists also note that Trump is double-counting and relying on investments that were initially announced during the Biden administration or investments that were already likely to occur because of the artificial intelligence build out.

    For example, the White House lists a $16 billion investment by computer chipmaker Global Foundries. But of that sum, more than $13 billion was announced during the Biden administration and supported by $1.6 billion in grants by the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, as well as other state and federal incentives.

    Similarly, the White House is banking on $200 billion being invested by the chipmaker Micron, but at least $120 billion of that was announced during the Biden era.

    For their part, White House officials largely credit Trump’s tariffs — like those imposed on Oct. 1 on kitchen cabinets, large trucks and pharmaceutical drugs — for forcing companies to make investments in the U.S., saying that the risk of additional import taxes if countries and companies fail to deliver on their promises will ensure that the promised cash comes into the economy.

    On Tuesday, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla endorsed this approach after his pharmaceutical drug company received a three-year grace period on tariffs and announced $70 billion in investments in the U.S.

    “The president was absolutely right,” Bourla said. “Tariffs is the most powerful tool to motivate behaviors.”

    “The tariffs played a big role,” Trump added.

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  • China’s factory activity contracts for a 6th straight month as trade tensions weigh

    HONG KONG — China’s factory activity shrank for a sixth straight month in September, the longest slump since 2019, an official report said Tuesday.

    The official manufacturing purchasing managers index, or PMI, improved to 49.8 from 49.4 in August. But it remained below the 50-cutoff level between contraction and expansion on a scale of 0 to 100.

    A private sector PMI survey by the credit research and rating startup RatingDog was more upbeat, with September’s overall PMI rising to 51.2 from 50.5 in August.

    The mixed manufacturing measures reflect persisting sluggish domestic demand and uncertainties over trade tensions with the United States.

    More detailed data measuring new orders and production saw month-on-month improvements.

    “The September PMI reads from China offered a picture that looked less like a coherent growth engine and more like a car with one cylinder firing while another misfires,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary

    Companies are under pressure from price cutting amid rough competition, he said.

    “Factories are moving more goods, but they’re being forced to do it at thinner margins, like street vendors selling more bowls of noodles at half price just to keep the crowd coming,” Innes said.

    The latest data show China’s economy is gaining momentum, with output accelerating slightly, said National Bureau of Statistics chief statistician Huo Lihui.

    China’s official manufacturing PMIs first slipped back into contraction in April as trade friction with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration heated up after he took office.

    The two sides are still slowly working their way toward a broad trade agreement after exchanging threats of sky-high tariffs on each others’ exports.

    A pause in steep U.S. tariff hikes on China has been extended until November, while a Sept. 19 phone call between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping offered glimmers of hope for improving relations.

    A truce hinges largely on a widely anticipated U.S. proposal for transferring ownership of TikTok to a U.S. company from its Chinese owner ByteDance. That would also require Beijing’s approval.

    A face-to-face meeting between Trump and Xi is set for the end of October in South Korea on the sidelines of an annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

    China’s economy has remained in the doldrums, bogged down by a prolonged slump in the property sector, elevated unemployment and weak household spending.

    Some economists are hoping that a rate cut by China’s central bank by the end of the year could help encourage more spending and investment. This month, the People’s Bank of China left its key lending rates unchanged following the U.S. Federal Reserve’s rate cut for the first time this year.

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  • US Steel changes course and will keep processing raw steel at Granite City plant in Illinois

    HARRISBURG, Pa. — U.S. Steel reversed course and said Friday that it will continue processing raw steel at its Granite City Works plant in Illinois, nixing a decision that had put the plant on track to stop work in the coming weeks.

    U.S. Steel did not explain its reasons for changing course, now barely three months after Nippon Steel sealed a deal with President Donald Trump to buy the iconic American steelmaker by giving the government a say over decisions that affect domestic steel production.

    In a brief statement, a U.S. Steel spokesperson said it will continue to supply raw steel slabs to Granite City “indefinitely.”

    Initially, it had said ending processing operations at Granite City would allow U.S. Steel to “maintain future flexibility.” On Friday, it said “our goal was to maintain flexibility, and we are pleased to have found a solution to continue slab consumption at Granite City.”

    It did not say what that solution was.

    The United Steelworkers union — which had opposed the buyout by Nippon Steel — accused U.S. Steel of trying to “wiggle out” of commitments that Nippon Steel made in its deal with the White House.

    “But we wouldn’t let it,” the union said in a statement. “We pushed back on USS’s flimsy excuse that it couldn’t supply slabs to Granite City for us to process. We reached out to political leaders to remind them that this was the very situation we foretold.”

    It also had planned a rally, it said, “to show management that we don’t go away without a fight – and we never will.”

    U.S. Steel responded that it is in full compliance with Nippon Steel’s agreement with the White House.

    U.S. Steel had said that, even though it was going to end processing work at Granite City, it wouldn’t lay off any of the roughly 800 workers there or reduce their pay, at least until 2027, when protections expire for Granite City in Nippon Steel’s agreement with the White House.

    Granite City Works makes rolls of sheet steel for the construction, container, pipe and automotive industries.

    The plant is located in southern Illinois, just outside St. Louis. However, in 2023, U.S. Steel stopped producing raw steel there when it idled the last operating blast furnace at Granite City. It idled the other blast furnace there in 2019.

    It has similar processing plants at its Mon Valley Works facilities in Pennsylvania and Gary Works in Indiana.

    The pursuit by Nippon Steel for the Pittsburgh-based company was buffeted by national security concerns, dragging out the transaction for more than a year after U.S. Steel shareholders approved it.

    In the end, Trump changed his stance on invoking national security grounds to block it after Nippon Steel upped its guarantees of investment into U.S. Steel facilities and added a so-called “golden share” provision that gives the federal government a say in certain decisions.

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    Follow Marc Levy on X at: https://x.com/timelywriter

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  • China says Nvidia violated antimonopoly laws, according to preliminary investigation

    LONDON — Chinese regulators said Monday that a preliminary investigation found chipmaker Nvidia violated the country’s anti-monopoly laws.

    The State Administration for Market Regulation said in a one-sentence statement that it would carry out “further investigation” into Nvidia, the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturer.

    The statement said the investigation centered on Nvidia’s purchase of network and data transmission company Mellanox Technologies.

    Nvidia didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment.

    Regulators said last year that they were investigating the company for suspected violations stemming from the $6.9 billion acquisition of Mellanox in 2019.

    The decision ratchets up pressure on the U.S. as officials from Washington hold trade talks with Beijing’s representatives in Spain this week.

    Beijing has been tightening scrutiny of the U.S. chip industry. On Saturday, China’s Ministry of Commerce said it was carrying out an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog IC chips imported from the U.S., including commodity chips that are commonly made by companies such as Texas Instruments and ON Semiconductor.

    U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is meeting Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Madrid for negotiations on tariffs and national security issues related to the ownership of social media platform TikTok. The talks were scheduled from Sunday to Wednesday.

    It’s the fourth round of discussions after meetings in London, Geneva and Stockholm. The two governments have agreed to several 90-day pauses on a series of increasing reciprocal tariffs, staving off an all-out trade war.

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