
Nidec hopes to catch China stimulus tailwind with appliance motor plant
EISAKU NITTA
QINGDAO, China -- Japanese manufacturer Nidec opened a new Chinese factory Wednesday for motors used in home appliances, a sector that China is targeting with subsidies in a bid to energize consumer spending.
The company plans to build another plant in the country within the next couple of years, as it turns its focus to China's domestic market amid deepening uncertainty around global trade.

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The Mainichi
26 minutes ago
- The Mainichi
Japan seeks free, fair trade in talks with ASEAN amid tensions
KUALA LUMPUR (Kyodo) -- Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya called for a "free, fair and open" international economic order in his talks Thursday with his ASEAN counterparts in Malaysia, amid trade tensions stemming from the threat of steep U.S. tariffs against Japan and the group's members. Noting the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations is "at the center of global growth," Iwaya said Japan is eager to strengthen cooperation with the regional bloc, adding its role has been "increasingly important for regional peace and prosperity." With the tariffs proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump in mind, the Japanese minister stressed the need to "maintain and strengthen" the multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization at its core. Trump has said the United States will impose a 25 percent tariff on imports from Japan starting Aug. 1, while goods from six ASEAN members will face up to 40 percent duties. Iwaya also separately met with his counterparts from the Mekong countries -- Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam -- and vowed to boost Japan's cooperation with them in such areas as disaster prevention, decarbonization and digitalization, as well as efforts to tackle cross-border crimes including online fraud. The other ASEAN members are Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.

Nikkei Asia
an hour ago
- Nikkei Asia
Seven & i posts stronger profit boosted by overseas convenience stores
Retail Profit fell at domestic stores but net profit saw boost from sale of Ito-Yokado assets The Japanese operator of 7-Eleven stores is under pressure to improve performance in the face of a takeover bid from Canada's Alimentation Couche-Tard. © Reuters TOKYO (Reuters) -- Japan's Seven & i Holdings said on Thursday operating profit rose 9.7% in the March to May quarter, beating analysts' estimates, on an improved performance by its overseas convenience stores business. The 7-Eleven operator is under pressure to improve its finances in the face of a $47 billion takeover bid from Canada's Alimentation Couche-Tard. Profit in the first quarter was 65.1 billion yen ($445.19 million), compared to an estimate of 58 billion yen from six analysts polled by LSEG. The Japanese retailing group previously announced a share buyback, is selling off non-core assets and plans to list its North American convenience store business. Profit fell at the company's domestic convenience stores business while overall net profit was boosted by the sale of store assets by retailer Ito-Yokado. In the U.S., Seven & i said gross profit margins improved due to the expansion of proprietary products and optimization of labor costs. Seven & i shares closed down 1.6% ahead of the earnings report and have fallen 13% in the year to date. The company had spent some 156 billion yen repurchasing shares by the end of last month. The retailer maintained its earnings forecast.


Nikkei Asia
an hour ago
- Nikkei Asia
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Hello everyone, this is Cissy from Hong Kong. Monday was a big day for BYD, as it marked the first anniversary of the Chinese EV champion's Thailand factory. It delivered its 90,000th vehicle in Thailand, a D9 MPV from its premium sub-brand Denza, after officially entering the Southeast Asian nation in 2022. BYD is also set to begin assembling electric vehicles at its new factory in Brazil, its largest overseas market, as early as this month. The company aims to produce 50,000 vehicles there this year, a move designed to reduce reliance on imports as tariffs increase. BYD has set a total sales target of 5.5 million vehicles for this year. In the first half of this year, the company sold approximately 2.146 million vehicles, achieving nearly 40% of its annual goal. For overseas markets, BYD aims to sell more than 800,000 vehicles in 2025. The company said its overseas sales for the first six months of this year had exceeded 470,000 vehicles. 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Huge surges in power demand at data centers training AI models, along with a bumpy renewable energy supply, meant "volatility on top of volatility" was making it challenging to keep the lights on, Schierenbeck told the FT. "AI data centers are very, very different from these office data centers because they really spike up," he said. "If you start your AI algorithm to learn and give them data to digest, they're peaking in seconds and going up to 10 times what they have normally used. "No user from an industry point of view would be allowed to have this kind of behavior -- if you want to start a smelter, you have to call the utility ahead," Schierenbeck added, while advocating for data centers to have similar rules applied to them by governments. AI's next generation The "DeepSeek moment" has revived investors' appetite for Chinese tech stocks, which had languished since Beijing's crackdown on the once-glittering sector. But some of the latest AI darlings, such as Manus, look to distance themselves from China in a bid to expand overseas, writes Nikkei Asia's Cissy Zhou. Since its sudden rise to fame, Manus has quietly moved its headquarters to Singapore and has started to aggressively recruit local talent this month, while at the same time laying off more than half of its employees in China, except some key AI engineers, according to people familiar with the matter. The move comes as the startup seeks international investment in the face of U.S. restrictions on funding Chinese AI companies. More broadly, China's appetite for AI-driven capital expenditure remains robust, despite Washington's restrictions on shipments of Nvidia's H20 chips, according to research by Jefferies. The investment bank said China has built up sufficient chip inventories to sustain data center growth at least through the first half of 2026. 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