Taiwan's machine tool industry encountered "winter" because the yen was depreciated?

For Taiwanese companies, which are mainly export-oriented, they have been hit hard by 2014. In this year, the depreciation of the yen reached a new low in six years. With 10,000 yen as the unit of calculation, it is still worth NT$4,000 in exchange in 2011 and NT$2,800 in 2014. The huge depreciation makes Taiwan's machine tool companies, which have a higher cost-performance advantage in the mid-to-high end market, find it quite unbearable. Just as a component manufacturer confided: People generally believe that Japanese products are the best in Asia. If the same product, Taiwan, was 30% cheaper than Japan in the past, now, Japan, the same product, will be 10% cheaper than Taiwan. . Zhuo Yongchao is even more outspoken: "In terms of competition, the depreciation of the yen is always a weapon of great lethality!" In addition to monetary leverage, the Japanese government has even released a "strategy": Any purchase of Japanese-made five-axis products CNC machine tools can all get government subsidies! Smart people all know that with the rapid development of aerospace, space, and the automotive industry, five-axis CNC machine tools will become the mainstream of the future development of the machine tool industry. The most sophisticated technologies of all machine tool companies are concentrated in this area, the momentum is rising, Japan This will undoubtedly suppress the morale of Taiwan's machine tool companies!

Continually suppressing people makes people uneasy. Although as a "veteran" in the foreign trade market, Taiwan's machine tool companies have not shown excessive anxiety, but since 2013, the export trade of Taiwan's machine tools has presented a number that is not good-looking. In 2012, the popularity of Taiwan’s machine tools reached a historical peak, with the amount of exports reaching US$4.2 billion. Just a year later, this figure dropped to US$3.5 billion. In January-June 2014, the export volume was only 1.81 billion. Dollars. Although the performance of the Taiwan region was not bad compared to the export performance of China's machine tool industry in the first half of 2014, which was US$5.28 billion, more than three-fourths of the machine tools produced in Taiwan are dependent on exports. If this year's total output value of Taiwan's machine tools continues, Maintaining around 5 billion U.S. dollars, Taiwan's machine tool companies will undoubtedly face huge inventory pressure. In contrast, the import volume of Taiwan’s machine tools increased by 12.4% in the first half of 2014, reaching nearly US$378 million, of which 49.7% was imported from Japan!

Machine tools are Taiwan's most mature and most-employed industries. This is a dilemma for the industry. However, the Taiwan Economic Research Institute has given an optimistic forecast: In the future, most industries in Taiwan will be “sunny”! Although this prediction comes from an authoritative organization, most entrepreneurs do not take this kind of optimism into their minds. After all, for two consecutive years of sluggish markets, the positive energy of the people who are trying to give them to the dark seems to be so pale and weak. Perhaps a little bit of joy to people is that, in order to promote the development of the local economy, the efforts made by Taiwan’s politicians in these years have achieved initial results.

As early as the financial crisis, market challenges characterized by global uncertainty, economic fluctuations, geopolitical instability, migratory markets, and natural disasters have caused tremendous changes in the outlook for the manufacturing industry. Taiwan’s overseas economic crisis is devastating. How to maintain the global reputation of the Taiwanese manufacturing industry in the general environment has become the topic of greatest concern to local politicians. Just as Ma Ying-jeou, the former leader of the Taiwan region, emphasized at the opening ceremony of the 2014 TMTS: "Taiwan must make a comeback in the world and become an indispensable link in the industry supply chain. It must strengthen Taiwan, connect Asia-Pacific, and lay out the world!"

In 2010, the ASEAN Plus Three Economic Cooperation Agreement, which covers 10 countries in Southeast Asia, China, Japan, and South Korea, will enter into force. They will implement mutual-implementation of tariff-free economic strategies in accordance with the contents of the treaty, but Taiwan does not include it. Inside. Taiwan political figures know that mainland China accounts for more than 40% of Taiwan’s total exports, while Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan’s exports have more than 70% overlap. If the ASEAN Plus Three Economic Cooperation Agreement goes into effect, cargo in South Korea and Japan can be low in the future. Tariffs or zero-tariffs enter the mainland market, but Taiwan’s goods still have to pay a 6.5% tariff, which will inevitably greatly undermine the competitiveness of Taiwanese products. At that time, if many factories are relocated, Taiwan will lose about 10,000 job opportunities, and GNP will also drop by one percentage point.

Therefore, before the "ASEAN Plus Three Economic Cooperation Agreement" entered into force, Taiwan immediately signed a cross-strait comprehensive economic cooperation agreement with the mainland, resulting in tariff reductions for more than 500 products produced in Taiwan. “Although there are not many products, it only accounts for 6% of our currency trade. However, through hard work, we finally obtained some tax cuts for the machine tool industry. In these years, we have saved a total of 1.85 billion US dollars for export enterprises!” Ma Ying-jeou’s “China Electromechanical Industry says. In order to further promote trade liberalization, in November 2013, Taiwan signed the economic cooperation agreement with the fifth largest trading partner and the fourth largest export market in Singapore. With the signing of the two agreements, 99% of Taiwan’s goods have been exempted from trade tariffs, and 83% of them have all been reduced to 0!

"Taiwan's 70% of trade depends on exports. We have no other choice. The signing of these two high-value, high-quality free trade agreements gives machine tool companies the opportunity to self-adjust, innovate, and increase in value, hoping to pass us. Efforts will eventually make Taiwan's machine tools an indispensable and irreplaceable industry in the global industry chain!" Ma Ying-jeou placed high hopes on Taiwan's machine tools.