Welcome to the Daily 5 report for Wednesday, Oct. 29.
On the 96th anniversary of the stock market crash that helped trigger the Great Depression, the auto industry is once again headed into crisis mode because of the chaos at Dutch/Chinese chip supplier Nexperia.
As Yang Jian reported, the dispute between Nexperia and its China subsidiary deepened after the Dutch headquarters tried to fire the company's global chief of sales and marketing amid a standoff over semiconductor supplies.
Nexperia tried to remove John Chang from his post only to be rebuffed by the China unit, according to an Oct. 24 posting by its China subsidiary on WeChat, a Chinese social media outlet, Jian reported.
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The subsidiary said that "after assessment and confirmation with professional legal institutions," it found the personnel change attempted by headquarters inconsistent with Chinese laws, including company law and labor contracts. The letter was addressed to employees and customers, Jian's story says.
The burgeoning semiconductor crisis exposes how fragile the auto industry's microchip supply chains remain, even after the 2020-23 chip shortage that ravaged global vehicle production, industry executives and experts told our John Irwin in this comprehensive story.
But to anyone with an interest in South Korea, Hyundai or Kia, that wasn't the biggest story of the day.
A trade deal reached by the U.S. and South Korea at their leaders' summit is a best-case compromise to untangle a deadlock in tariff talks that had raised questions about the Asian country's export-heavy economy, analysts told Reuters.
President Donald Trump and South Korean officials announced they had finalized details of a fraught trade deal on how to structure a $350 billion investment in the U.S. in return for cuts to import duties on South Korean goods, Reuters reported.
Central to the agreement was setting tariffs on Korean autos and auto parts at 15 percent, down from the current 25 percent, placing them on par with Japanese competitors, the story said.
Perhaps the most remarkable achievement was that the two nations reached such a deal even after the controversial detention of more than 300 Koreans in an immigration raid at a Hyundai-affiliated battery plant in Georgia last month.
That's it for now. Have a great rest of your day. If you want to view this story in your browser, click here.
— Philip Nussel, online editor
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