Economy Continues to send negative signals

Amid the news about the domestic terrorist incident in Wisconsin, the Mars Rover landing, the Olympics, and sundry other incidents, Taiwan's economy continues to slow....WaPo says:

Taiwan’s exports fell 11.6 percent to $24.8 billion in July from a year earlier, contracting for a fifth consecutive month amid weak foreign demand for the island’s high-tech and other goods.

The Finance Ministry said Tuesday that imports declined 3.2 percent to $23.9 billion in July.

Exports to China fell 11 percent to $10 billion. Exports to the U.S. dropped 20 percent to $2.8 billion, following a sharp decline in smartphone sales by HTC Corp., Taiwan’s top handset maker.

RTT News had a nice graphic of Taiwan's exports... note the overall downward trend....

RTT reported that shipments of 3C stuff plummeted 34.5% YOY. Ugly. The RTT report observed:

Inflation surged to a near four-year high 0f 2.46 percent in July on higher food costs, limiting room for the central bank to ease monetary policy in response to flagging economic activity. Core inflation was 0.96 percent.

The recent surge in food prices is due to the typhoons and rain that have been battering us (FocusTaiwan says veggie prices rose nearly 33%, while fruit prices went up nearly 20%) , but with the massive drought in the US worldwide food prices are going to surge. This fall things are going to be tough...
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