EU-China summit, Shanghai AI conference, Taiwan recall votes
Amid a shifting geopolitical order, European Union leaders are set to visit Beijing for a summit during which bilateral tensions are expected to dominate, even as China tries to use the fallout from U.S. President Donald Trump's policies to bolster its global position. Across the Taiwan Strait, voters will be preparing to cast their ballots over potential recalls of Kuomintang lawmakers.
In Japan, as markets seek to make sense of the upper house election result, the Bank of Japan's deputy governor is expected to offer some hints to the central bank's policy direction in a speech.
Get the best of our coverage of Asia and much more by following us on X, where our handle is @NikkeiAsia. We are also now on Bluesky, with the handle @asia.nikkei.com.
MONDAY
Marcos' trip to U.S.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s visit to the U.S. at Trump's invitation continues through Tuesday. Beyond tariff-related concerns, the long-standing allies are expected to address the evolving dynamics of their partnership, particularly in light of China's expanding influence.
TUESDAY
Data: Malaysia consumer price index
WEDNESDAY
ADB economic outlook
The Asian Development Bank is set to release the latest update to its flagship "Asian Development Outlook" report, with the publication coming at a crucial time given the evolving impact of the U.S.-China trade war. In the previous edition, the multilateral lender flagged the impact of Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs in Asia, a region that faces the highest duties in the world.
BOJ deputy governor speech
Bank of Japan Deputy Gov. Shinichi Uchida will give a speech at a meeting with leaders in Kochi Prefecture. His remarks will be closely followed by market participants, as they will come just days after the July 20 upper house election, with the central bank's next monetary policy meeting following not long after at the end of the month.
Earnings: Tesla, Infosys, Dr. Reddy's
THURSDAY
EU-China summit
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her delegation arrive in Beijing following a visit to Tokyo the previous day. Amid trade disputes and Beijing's support for Russia, the EU team are likely to face a frostier reception in China. Beijing has already set the tone by halving the invitation to one day, and it is unsure if President Xi Jinping will even attend the summit.
Indonesia auto show
Nearly 40 passenger vehicle brands, including BYD, Hyundai, Mitsubishi Motors and Toyota, will take part in the Gaikindo Indonesia International Auto Show organized by the Association of Indonesian Automotive Manufacturers. The event, which is being held in a Jakarta suburb, comes at a time when Indonesia's shrinking middle class is impacting ASEAN's largest auto market.
Earnings: Mitsubishi Motors, Nestle India, SK Hynix, Hyundai Motor
Data: India flash purchasing managers index
Monetary policy: Turkey
FRIDAY
Earnings: LG Energy Solutions
SATURDAY
Shanghai AI conference
The World Artificial Intelligence Conference, China's largest AI exhibition, opens in Shanghai. The annual event, lasting four days, is expected to showcase over 3,000 cutting-edge exhibits from tech companies including Alibaba Group, Moore Threads Technologies, QuantumCtek and Tesla.
Taiwan recall elections
No-confidence votes will be held against 24 KMT lawmakers, the first in a series of moves to potentially recall up to 31 of them. The action stems from growing backlash by lawyers, protesters and civil society groups against the KMT-led legislature's policies, which have impacted President Lai Ching-te's government budgets, the operations of the top court and defense and foreign policy initiatives.
Earnings: Kotak Mahindra Bank
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Nikkei Asia
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- Nikkei Asia
Mitsubishi Motors faces growing challenges in Indonesia and Thailand
Mitsubishi Mortors President and CEO Takao Kato, left, and Atsushi Kurita, right, the head of the company's Indonesia subsidiary, pose with singer Shabrina Leonita during the global launch of the Destinator SUV in Jakarta on July 17. (Photo by Bobby Nugroho) NANA SHIBATA JAKARTA -- Mitsubishi Motors is facing a tough business environment in Indonesia and Thailand but is enjoying robust sales in regional peers Vietnam and the Philippines, according to President and CEO Takao Kato, detailing experiences that reflect the nations' contrasting economic fortunes and the impact of tougher competition from Chinese rivals. "ASEAN is Mitsubishi Motors' most important market," Kato told Nikkei Asia during an interview in Jakarta on the sidelines of a new vehicle launch on Thursday, adding that the region accounted for 30% of the company's car sales last year. "[We] will concentrate our management resources [in the region]."
Japan Times
3 hours ago
- Japan Times
Meta, X and LinkedIn appeal unprecedented VAT claim by Italy
U.S. tech giants Meta, X and LinkedIn have lodged an appeal against an unprecedented VAT claim by Italy that could influence tax policy across the 27-nation European Union, four sources with direct knowledge of the matter said on Monday. This is the first time that Italy has failed to reach a settlement agreement after bringing tax cases against tech companies, resulting in a fully-fledged judicial tax trial being launched. According to the sources, this came about because the case went beyond agreeing on a settlement figure and sought to establish a broader approach focused on how social networks provide access to their services. Italian tax authorities argue that free user registrations with X, LinkedIn and Meta platforms should be seen as taxable transactions as they imply the exchange of a membership account in return for a user's personal data. The issue is especially sensitive given wider trade tensions between the EU and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Italy is claiming €887.6 million ($1.03 billion) from Meta, €12.5 million from X and around €140 million from LinkedIn. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Elon Musk's social network X and Microsoft's LinkedIn filed their appeals with a first instance tax court after mid-July, when the deadline for responding to a tax assessment notice issued by Italy's Revenue Agency in March passed. According to several experts, the Italian approach could affect almost all companies, from airlines to supermarkets to publishers, who link access to free services on their sites to users' acceptance of profiling cookies. It could also eventually be extended across the EU where VAT is a harmonized tax. In a statement, Meta said that it had cooperated "fully with the authorities on our obligations under EU and local law." It added that the company "strongly disagrees with the idea that providing access to online platforms to users should be subject to VAT." LinkedIn said it had "nothing to share at this time". X did not respond to a request for comment. It is uncertain whether a full trial of the matter, which involves three levels of judgment and takes an average of 10 years, will go ahead. Following discussions with the three companies, Italy is preparing as a next step to seek an advisory opinion from the European Commission, the sources said. The Italian Revenue Agency will have to prepare specific questions, which the Economy Ministry will then send to the EU Commission's VAT Committee, which meets twice a year. Rome aims to submit its questions for the meeting scheduled to be held by early November, in order to receive the EU's comments in time for the following meeting in spring 2026. Italy's Economy Ministry and Revenue Agency declined to comment. The EU Commission's VAT Committee is an independent advisory group. While its assessment will be non-binding, a "No" could prompt Italy to halt the case and ultimately drop the criminal investigation by Italian prosecutors, according to the sources. The dispute is one of several between Europeans and U.S. Big Tech. On July 11 it was reported that Meta would not be tweaking its pay-or-consent model further despite the risk of EU fines. According to a Financial Times report on July 17, the European Commission has stalled one of its investigations into Musk's platform X for breaching its digital transparency rules while it seeks to conclude trade talks with the U.S.
Japan Times
3 hours ago
- Japan Times
Trump's critical minerals obsession reignites deep-sea mining
The leader of one of the most aggressive seabed mining startups spent years invoking global warming to spark interest in extracting avocado-sized rocks rich in electric-vehicle battery metals from the bottom of the ocean. "We want to help the world transition away from fossil fuels with the smallest possible climate change and environmental impact,' Gerard Barron, the Australian chief executive officer of a company then known as DeepGreen, told a 2019 meeting of the United Nations-affiliated International Seabed Authority, which for a decade has been debating regulations to allow the mining of untouched, biodiverse deep-sea ecosystems in global waters. That's not Barron's pitch anymore. Climate was out and critical minerals were in during an appearance earlier this year before a congressional committee in Washington, DC. His firm, renamed as The Metals Company (TMC), would help "ensure the nation's energy security and industrial competitiveness for generations,' Barron said. "China is close behind.' Barron's new tack is working. In April, President Donald Trump issued an executive order expediting U.S. licensing of seabed mining, departing from international law to unleash what the administration called a "gold rush' to "counter China's growing influence.' The country is set to conduct ISA-sanctioned tests of two seabed mining machines in the Pacific over the next year. Kenny Bolster, Senior Scientist at Viridian Biometals, holds a sample of polymetallic nodules at the Viridian Biometals lab in Pasadena, California on June 25th. | Wolf Image / via Bloomberg China already dominates the critical minerals supply chain on land, and TMC had successfully tapped into the U.S. president's pursuit of China-free metals, expressed as a desire for dominion over Canada and Greenland. The global seabed, TMC repeatedly emphasized as it lobbied politicians and the White House, holds the planet's largest estimated reserves of minerals like cobalt and nickel in the form of black rocks called polymetallic nodules. These cover the Pacific Ocean floor by the billions. In an instant, Trump cleared the way for a race to the abyss to extract nodules, even though seabed mining technology remains under development and commercially unproven. At the ISA's annual meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, delegates on Monday decried Trump's move, with China's representative denouncing the U.S. for "unilateralist hegemonic acts' and attempting to "replace the global standards with U.S. standards.' Within days of Trump's order, Canadian-registered TMC's U.S. subsidiary filed the world's first application to mine the seabed in international waters, including an area it licenses from the ISA. An $85 million investment from a leading Korean metals processor soon followed. Nasdaq-listed TMC's shares, which have periodically languished below a dollar, hit a 52-week high of $8.19 on Thursday. A Silicon Valley startup called Impossible Metals, meanwhile, has applied for a license to explore and possibly mine nodules in U.S. waters off American Samoa, with an aim to raise $1 billion. Then on July 14, a top executive at U.S. defense giant Lockheed Martin told the Financial Times the company is in talks to give seabed miners access to international areas of the Pacific it licenses from the U.S. A Lockheed Martin spokesperson declined to confirm the report but said, "We appreciate the Trump administration's focus on ensuring reliable sources of critical minerals, including the ocean.' On Monday, delegates in Kingston ordered a report on ISA-licensed seabed miners at risk of violating their contracts with the body, a thinly veiled reference to TMC and other companies that might also seek to apply for U.S. licenses to mine in international waters. The Trump-triggered seabed mining boom faces significant hurdles, though. While TMC has told investors it expects to begin mining within a year of receiving a license, the technology to extract minerals from the seabed at depths of four kilometers could be years away from being deployed at scale. Its competitiveness with terrestrial mining is unknown, as is the economic viability of processing and refining seabed minerals amid seesawing metal prices and the growing market share of battery technologies not reliant on nodule metals. The U.S. lacks such metallurgical capacity, and it could take years to bring online in the few countries outside of China with the potential to refine nodule minerals. "Given the rapid evolution of batteries and other relevant technologies, there is great uncertainty about the future demand for critical minerals,' researchers at RAND wrote in a recent report. "A seabed mining industry, as a whole, faces considerable opposition from nations and organizations concerned about the potential negative environmental impacts.' The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Gerard Barron, chief executive of The Metals Company, at Times Square in New York on Sept. 17, 2021. | Ashley Gilbertson / The New York Times The countries that TMC relies on for seabed mining and processing technology are among the ISA's 169 member nations (plus the European Union) that oppose unilateral mining in international waters. Amid such backlash, a Japanese corporation, Pacific Metals Company, that planned to process TMC's nodules has now told investors that it would only "launch operations once the international rules are finalized.' "All those parties have a legal obligation to ensure that deep sea mining only takes place through the ISA,' says Samantha Robb, an Amsterdam-based attorney who specializes in ocean litigation. At the ISA, delegates convened behind closed doors on Friday to debate how to respond to TMC's plans. Barron, who once sat with the delegation of a tiny Pacific island nation that sponsors one of TMC's ISA contracts, has been absent this year but he's weighing in from afar. "Amid some noisy grandstanding coming out of Jamaica this month, this is a good reminder ... the U.S. has every right to pursue seafloor resources in international waters,' he wrote Wednesday on X. In a statement, TMC said it was "on firm legal and regulatory footing,' citing the sizable investments it's recently attracted. The company, however, cautioned investors in a May securities filing that a U.S. mining license wouldn't be recognized internationally, which could affect "logistics, processing and market access' for the seabed minerals TMC mines. 'It's going to take some time' More than a thousand miles southwest of Mexico on a September morning in 2022, a yellow, 80-metric-ton machine slowly rumbled across the seabed on tank-like treads, a plume of sediment billowing behind. During a two-month test for TMC, the 38-foot-long prototype vacuumed up 3,000 metric tons of nodules, sending them through a tube to a specialized surface vessel called the Hidden Gem. TMC hailed the trial as a success. Yet any commercial operations are a ways off, even if the U.S. grants TMC a mining license this year, given technological and legal obstacles that must be overcome. Matthew Lavichant, an intern at Viridian Biometals, plates wells in preparation for conducting a test on samples. | Wolf Image / via Bloomberg Allseas, a Dutch-owned, Swiss-registered offshore engineering and construction company, developed the technology, the world's only working prototype of a nodule mining system. The company supplies the apparatus to TMC and is its second-largest shareholder. To meet TMC's production targets, it must now build a much bigger version capable of harvesting nodules nearly around the clock under crushing pressure far from shore. A U.S. seabed mining license, however, would require TMC to deploy American-built and owned vessels. How the companies would comply with that mandate is unclear. Allseas said in a statement that it would take about two years to engineer the technical systems to support full-scale mining but it won't begin that work "until we are confident that all relevant regulatory conditions are met.' Allseas, which itself owns an ISA-licensed seabed mining company, has come under pressure from Dutch politicians and activists not to provide technology for unilateral mining. A laboratory ball mill used to pulverize polymetallic nodules. A bioreactor that contains polymetallic nodule bits and microbes. | Wolf Image / via Bloomberg TMC says it can't comment while its U.S. mining license application is under review. But in a May 14 securities filing the company said it's "evaluating U.S.-based vessel' options. However, the U.S. hasn't built a specialized seabed mining ship like the Hidden Gem, and only eight U.S. ocean-going bulk cargo carriers — large ships that can hold tens of thousands of pounds of nodules and transport them to shore — are in service. Seven of them are at or near the end of their lifespan, according to a 2024 U.S. Maritime Administration report. Impossible Metals uses a nodule collector, called Eureka, that's designed to hover above the ocean floor, its robotic claws selecting individual nodules that its artificial intelligence program determines aren't inhabited by marine organisms. (Scientists estimate that at least 30% to 40% of deep ocean life in the seabed targeted for mining live on nodules.) The company has delayed a planned trial of the Eureka in an ISA-licensed area of the Pacific until at least 2027 because the technology needs further refinement. And any mining wouldn't happen until at least the early 2030s. Impossible Metals' mining license application is for U.S. waters, not areas controlled by ISA. "That's far less controversial,' said CEO Oliver Gunasekara. "But obviously it's going to take some time.' What it takes to process a nodule In a small lab in Pasadena, California, scientists at an Impossible Metals spinoff called Viridian Biometals are trying to crack a problem about as challenging as pulling nodules out of the abyss: getting the metals out of the nodules. Nodule minerals precipitate out of seawater, forming layers around a piece of whale bone, a shark tooth or another small object at the rate of a few millimeters every million years. Unlike terrestrial minerals, where a couple of different metals might be found together in a deposit, nodules contain nickel, cobalt and copper particles scattered throughout every rock, mostly embedded in a matrix of manganese oxide. A laboratory ball mill used to pulverize polymetallic nodules. A bioreactor that contains polymetallic nodule bits and microbes. | Wolf Image / via Bloomberg "The treatment of materials that contain all four of these elements is not something that is commercially done today,' said Lyle Trytten, a veteran of the metals processing industry and president of Canada-based Trytten Consulting Services. Viridian scientists are tinkering with rock-breathing microbes that oxidize nodules to extract the most valuable metals. On a June afternoon, senior scientist Kenny Bolster opens up what looks like a freezer to reveal stainless steel bioreactors. As microbes inside oxide the manganese bits, they release nickel, cobalt and copper ions into a solution. "All this happens at ambient temperature and pressure, which saves an enormous amount of energy and doesn't produce any toxic waste,' says Viridian CEO Eric Macris. It'll take a few years to assess whether the technology is likely to be commercially feasible. "We love what Viridian is doing but we're just not sure if it will be mature enough when we need it,' says Impossible Metals' Gunasekara. If TMC, Impossible Metals and other companies mine the ocean floor under a U.S. license, then federal law requires the minerals to be processed and refined in America. Aside from Viridian's early efforts, the U.S. has no such capacity. A single facility in the U.S. capable of processing and refining nodules would cost several billion dollars, and could take up to a decade to reach full production, in part due to the complexities of handling an entirely new feedstock, according to Niels Verbaan, director of metallurgy technical services for Swiss testing and certification company SGS. The U.S. tax and spending bill enacted on July 4 allocates $5.5 billion to the Department of Defense for investments in critical minerals supply chains. But the U.S. has suffered a precipitous decline in metallurgical expertise since the 1980s when universities began to eliminate related degree programs. "We are decades behind now, and it's going to be very hard to catch up,' says Corby Anderson, a professor of metallurgical and materials engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. New immigration restrictions will also make it harder to recruit engineering talent from overseas. Samples of polymetallic nodules at the Viridian Biometals lab. Photographer: Alex Welsh/Bloomberg | Samples of polymetallic nodules at the Viridian Biometals lab. Photographer: Alex Welsh/Bloomberg Wolf Image China has invested heavily in the industry and is now in a position to retrofit existing facilities to process nodules or build dedicated new plants. The country processes 74% of the world's cobalt ore, according to a 2024 report from the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan think tank, while 97% of global nickel ore processing capacity lies outside of North America. China also maintains more than 80% of the capacity for refining those metals into advanced EV battery materials. There's few existing facilities outside of China capable of handling nodules, even if a U.S. seabed miner receives permission to use them and the owners are willing to revamp operations, according to industry executives. "These processing plants are not just sitting there idle begging for feed, they're all in use today,' says Trytten. The 'blue whale' in the room TMC has found one overseas metals processor willing to make the switch. Last year, Pacific Metals Company of Japan fed a 2,000-ton pile of nodules collected by TMC in 2022 into an electric-arc furnace to produce 500 tons of a material. In February, it was smelted into a nickel-cobalt-copper alloy. "These process plants are very expensive to build, they're very complicated, they're very risky,' says Jeffrey Donald, TMC's head of onshore development. "So by using an existing asset, existing operators, you're really taking that capital off the front end and you're really de-risking the technology and operations aspect.' The Maersk Launcher, a ship chartered in 2021 by The Metals Company to explore the potential of seabed mining, in Pacific waters near Rosarito, Mexico, June 7, 2021. | Tamir Kalifa / The New York Times In April, Pacific Metals announced it would transition from processing nickel ore to smelting nodules. But it doesn't expect full production to begin until 2029 at the earliest. TMC has also struck a deal with metals giant Korea Zinc, which is assessing the feasibility of refining nodules into battery materials, a process TMC has so far tested only in the lab. Whether nations would be enabling deep-sea mining through commercial relationships with U.S.-licensed seabed mining companies was the subject of whispered conversations among ISA delegates this month as they continued drafting mining regulations. Trump's move to mine in international waters and TMC's defiance of the ISA was, as French ambassador Olivier Guyonvarch alluded, "the blue whale' in the room. The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea prohibits unilateral mining by any country or corporation. It also requires the ISA to administer the global seabed for the benefit of humanity, with any royalties from mining divided among member states. The U.S. never ratified the treaty, though it had generally adhered to its provisions and still participates in ISA proceedings as an observer. Pressure is growing on member states to not supply technology to seabed mining companies the U.S. licenses, process their nodules or buy metals from them, as the treaty mandates ISA countries treat unilateral mining as illegitimate. Thirty-seven ISA countries support a moratorium on seabed mining until its environmental impacts are better understood. "The risks of bypassing the ISA's oversight are not only legal, they are also economic,' ISA Secretary-General Leticia Carvalho said in a statement. "Product lines derived from ventures that violate international law will carry reputational and legal concerns that increase the risk of the investment and can undermine its return.' Pacific Metals appears to have gotten the message. In a recent investor briefing, the company, which did not respond to requests for comment, emphasized that when it comes to nodule processing, it considers "international credibility to be a material issue.'
