Todd Bishop
The prospect of trade friction between China and the United States is unclear. Toshiba’s president, Japan’s Machine Tool Industry Association (Japan Labor Union), President Yumura said that the United States will increase tariffs on imported goods from China, which will directly hit the surrounding supply chain and strengthen the wait-and-see attitude of enterprises.
Yumura Yuki believes that China’s domestic demand environment is improving and will not decline further. Regarding US sanctions on Huawei, he said that he did not hear the difficulties faced by member companies directly, but he is expected to have an impact on the machine tool industry through parts such as semiconductors.
The Japanese Labor Union announced that the export volume of machine tools exported to China in April decreased by 48.7% year-on-year to 15.6 billion won (Japanese yen. The same below), and fell for 14 months, the decline was even more than the 44% increase in March. Total orders in April fell by 33.4% to 1,088.6 billion, a seven-month losing streak, with orders in the automotive-related sector falling by 46.5% to 12.6 billion.
