22/04/2025

BIZ & FINANCE TUESDAY | APR 22, 2025

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Seoul finds increase in ‘Made in Korea’ breaches o Some firms use false

JD.com calls out anti-competitive pressures on food delivery couriers

SHANGHAI: Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com highlighted anti-competitive pressures on food delivery couriers in a social media post yesterday, alleging that other platforms were coercing couriers to avoid working with JD Takeaway. JD Takeaway began onboarding restaurants in February with promises of “zero commissions all year round”, marking its entrance into China’s highly competitive food delivery space and threatening to disrupt the market share of leading players who rely on scale for success in this low-margin sector. In the post on JD.com’s official Weixin account, addressed to couriers working with JD Takeaway, the company said it was aware of pressures on them to not accept orders from JD.com and that it sympathised with their plight of being forced to choose between platforms. JD.com did not name competing platforms in its post. China’s food delivery sector has long been dominated by giant Meituan, with Alibaba-owned Ele.me the second-largest player in the country based on market share. Meituan and Ele.me did not immediately reply to an e-mailed request for comment on JD.com’s post. However, Meituan, in a post on its Weixin account, said it had punished one of its drivers for falsely claiming he had been banned by Meituan for taking orders from other platforms, describing the driver’s claim as “pure fabrication”. JD.com has promised to provide sufficient orders to couriers banned by other platforms to ensure they can maintain their income level. It also said it would double its recruitment aim for full-time riders to 100,000 from 50,000 in the next three months. JD.com is the first platform to offer its full-time riders direct labour contracts, making them eligible to collect full insurance benefits. – Reuters Second Boeing jet starts return from China, tracker shows SEOUL: A second Boeing jet intended for use by a Chinese airline was heading back to the US yesterday, flight tracking data showed, in what appears to be another victim of the tit-for-tat bilateral tariffs launched by President Donald Trump in his global trade offensive. The 737 MAX 8 landed in the US territory of Guam yesterday, after leaving Boeing’s Zhoushan completion centre near Shanghai, data from flight tracking website AirNav Radar showed. Guam is one of the stops such flights make on the 8,000km journey across the Pacific between Boeing’s US production hub in Seattle and the Zhoushan completion centre, where planes are ferried by Boeing for final work and delivery to a Chinese carrier. On Sunday a 737 MAX painted with the livery for China’s Xiamen Airlines made the return journey from Zhoushan and landed at Seattle’s Boeing Field. It is not clear which party made the decision for the two aircraft to return to the US. Trump this month raised baseline tariffs on Chinese imports to 145%. In retaliation, China has imposed a 125% tariff on US goods. A Chinese airline taking delivery of a Boeing jet could be crippled by the tariffs, given that a new 737 MAX has a market value of around US$55 million, according to IBA, an aviation consultancy. The plane flew from Seattle to Zhoushan just under a month ago. The return of the 737 MAX jets, Boeing’s best selling model, is the latest sign of disruption to new aircraft deliveries from a breakdown in the aerospace industry’s decades-old duty-free status. Confusion over changing tariffs could leave many aircraft deliveries in limbo, with some airline CEOs saying they would defer delivery of planes rather than pay duties, analysts say. – Reuters

and countries, including those on China that began to rise from February. “There was a rise in disguised export attempts during Trump’s first presidency and we expect there to be a similar trend,” said Lee Kwang-woo, investigation planning director at the KCS. Anticipating increased risks, authorities conducted the latest investigation preemptively to prevent illegal exports. They have already found signs of such attempts to avoid Trump’s tariffs from the first quarter, Lee said during a media briefing. South Korean customs officials held a meeting with US officials yesterday to discuss joint investigation efforts. South Korean officials have said there could be a rise in attempts by foreign companies, such as those in neighbouring China, to use South Korea, which is a major US ally and has a free-trade pact, as a bypass to avoid tariffs and regulations. Trump slapped 25% tariffs on South Korea this month, among a new set of sweeping levies, which were later suspended for three months.

The US now imposes 145% tariffs on China after back-and-forth retaliatory actions, which economists say have severed trade between the world’s two biggest economies. Monday’s findings include 3.3 billion won worth of cathode materials used for batteries, imported from China and shipped to the US with South Korea falsely marked as the country of origin, to avoid already high tariffs in January even before Trump’s tariffs took effect. In March, 19.3 billion won worth of surveillance cameras were imported from China in parts and reassembled in South Korea to bypass US restrictions on Chinese communication devices. Some of the goods have been shipped abroad while others are still at the port. The Korea Customs Service has launched a special task force to prevent attempts to illegally export such goods and plans to come up with more specific response measures to protect domestic companies. Meanwhile, the violations discovered will be referred to prosecutors. – Reuters

SEOUL: South Korea has found increased attempts to disguise foreign products as Korean exports, primarily from China, to avoid US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, its customs agency said yesterday. The Korea Customs Service said it has found 29.5 billion won (RM91 million) worth of violations related to country of origin from the first quarter, with US-bound shipments accounting for 97% of the total, after a special probe last month. That compared to a total of 34.8 billion won worth of violations for all of 2024, among which US-bound shipments accounted for 62%. Trump, who took office in January, has imposed significant tariffs on various products country-of-origin markings to bypass Trump’s tariffs

An employee helping a customer to buy gold jewellery at a shop in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. – AFPPIC

Gold hits record high, dollar falls to three-year low NEW YORK: Gold scaled a record peak yesterday, spurred by concerns over global economic growth amid the US-China trade war, while a weaker dollar further boosted the rally. Spot gold advanced 1.9% to US$3,391.02 an ounce as of 0641 GMT (2.41pm in Malaysia) after hitting a record high of US$3,391.62 earlier in the session. tailwind for prices as well,” said IG market strategist Yeap Jun Rong. US President Donald Trump announced “reciprocal tariffs” on dozens of countries on April 2, and while his administration paused levies for some countries, it has ratcheted its trade battle with China. with the Kremlin saying there was no order to extend the pause in frontline fighting. These issues bode well for the safe-haven bullion. However, gold’s relative strength index (RSI) stands at 75, indicating that the metal is overbought.

Meanwhile, Trump launched a series of attacks against Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell, with his team evaluating whether they could fire Powell. On the geopolitical front, Russia and Ukraine accused each other of thousands of attacks that violated the one-day Easter ceasefire declared by President Vladimir Putin,

“The next potential milestone for gold could be around the US$3,500 level, though positioning may appear crowded in the near term and technical indicators suggest near-term overbought conditions,”Yeap said. Spot silver added 0.8% to US$32.84 an ounce, platinum gained 1% to US$976.60, while palladium fell 0.2% to US$961.50. – Reuters

US gold futures firmed 2.2% to US$3,402.80. The dollar index hit a three-year low, making gold more attractive for other currency holders. “Fundamentally, markets are pricing in heightened geopolitical risks, driven by US tariff tensions and stagflation concerns, while resilient central bank demand offers an added