With ATSC 3.0-compliant TV sets “beginning to make advances in the consumer marketplace,” the day should come “in the near future” when rising household penetration of 3.0 TVs “will enable us to be able to start phasing out 1.0,” Sinclair President-Technology Del Parks told the TV Tech Summit Thursday. “The question for us is, how soon can we turn off 1.0 and take advantage of all of the capabilities of ATSC 3.0?”
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai denied Thursday in a Senate Finance Committee hearing that the need she identified a day earlier before House Ways and Means to “turn the page on the old playbook” (see 2203300051) meant that the Biden administration was walking away from holding China accountable for its commitments under the phase one trade agreement. The U.S. needs to “stick with” phase one and enforce the agreement’s “dispute resolution” provisions, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, told Tai. “If we just say we’re going to forget that and make that part of the old playbook, I think it sends a terrible message,” said Portman, the former USTR under President George W. Bush. “When China makes an agreement with us, in order to fulfill their obligations, we have to exercise our legal rights.” The old playbook, responded Tai, “focused exclusively on pressuring China” to curb its bad trade behavior. “We are not giving up on pressing China,” she said. “All tools remain on the table with respect to dispute settlement and enforcement,” said Tai. “In fact, what I’m saying is we’re committing to doing more work, and our strategy needs to expand.”
Sinclair’s One Media 3.0 will sell its majority stake in Saankhya Labs and keep a minority interest in Tejas Networks after Tejas announced a definitive agreement to buy 64.4% of Saankhya and said it plans to acquire the remaining shares in the chipmaker in a “secondary acquisition.” One Media teamed with Saankhya five years ago to “fast-track” development of ATSC 3.0 receiver chipsets for mobile phones, promising to make the handsets commercial-ready in less than a year (see 1703280044). The broad commercial aims haven't yet materialized. One Media President Mark Aitken praised the “close relationship with Saankhya” Thursday as having been “critical to moving our company forward” in NextGenTV.
Four rounds of Section 301 tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on more than $400 billion worth of Chinese imports have “not incentivized China to change” its unfair trade practices as the former president intended, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai told a House Ways and Means Committee hearing Wednesday on the Biden administration's 2022 trade policy agenda. Rep. Tom Rice, R-S.C., had asked Tai what her plan was to “bring China to the table” and hold it accountable for the commitments it made under the February 2020 phase one trade agreement.
The global semiconductor supply chain is “experiencing pressure” above and beyond the existing shortages and logistical bottlenecks, due to the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, said Micron Technology CEO Sanjay Mehrotra on an earnings call Tuesday for its fiscal Q2 ended March 3. “The region is an important source for the global supply of noble gases and other critical minerals that are used in semiconductor manufacturing,” he said.
The lack of “any visible cyber activity” from Moscow is one of many “surprises about the campaign that Russia is waging against Ukraine,” Keir Giles, Chatham House senior consulting fellow-Russian and Eurasian affairs, said Friday on a Conference Board podcast. “There are a lot of areas of Russian capability that were expected to be deployed against Ukraine that somehow haven’t materialized.” The impact of major Russian cyber operations against Ukraine would be “huge,” and many experts are speculating “that is actually why Russia is being restrained and is holding off from mounting the campaigns that were expected,” said Giles. “If Russia conducts cyberattacks against Ukraine only, it may be very hard for them to contain the effects to Ukraine only.” Giles worries that in the “later stages of Russia’s war on the West” there will materialize cyberattacks from Moscow that “are far less restrained,” he said. “If and when Russia does move on from Ukraine, and it comes away from Ukraine thinking that at least it had met some of its objectives, then the next stage of the attack on the West will almost certainly include those cyberattacks that are far less discriminating.” If Russia succeeds in removing access to the internet “in large sectors of large countries,” the economic impact obviously will be significant, said Giles. “Everybody that is data-dependent or that manages civilian telecommunications infrastructure needs to be prepared,” he said.
Consumer intentions on buying new TV sets held steady in March compared with February, according to preliminary Conference Board data released Tuesday. Analytics firm Toluna canvassed 5,000 U.S. homes through March 23, finding 10.9% plan to buy a new TV set in the next six months, compared with 11% in February, 11.5% in January and 11% in March 2021, said the board. Consumer confidence increased slightly in March after declines in January and February, and “continues to be supported by strong employment growth,” it said. Consumer confidence “has been holding up remarkably well despite geopolitical uncertainties and expectations for inflation,” said the board. “These headwinds are expected to persist in the short term and may potentially dampen confidence as well as cool spending further in the months ahead.”
HP believes its “scale” can help relieve Poly of the supply-chain woes that have hampered recent revenue growth for the supplier of audio and video work-from-anywhere solutions, said CEO Enrique Lores on an investor call Monday summarizing HP’s definitive agreement to buy Poly (the former Plantronics) for $3.3 billion cash. HP Chief Financial Officer Marie Myers said the transaction is expected to close by the end of calendar 2022 and will be financed with cash on hand, plus new debt, without sacrificing HP’s previous commitments to buy back $4 billion in stock during its fiscal year ending late October.
Business leaders continue to express “strong sentiments” about their plans to implement hybrid-work models “that include substantial presence in the office, with a growing number already having taken the step,” said Steelcase CEO Sara Armbruster on an earnings call Thursday for fiscal Q4 ended Feb. 25. The office-furniture manufacturer’s financial well-being has been a bellwether of work-from-home trends during the COVID-19 pandemic. It reported a 7% revenue increase for the year to $2.8 billion. CEOs “resoundingly” talk about their “desire to reshape their culture, and that includes changing their spaces and bringing employees together in person,” she said. “While we're still seeing companies make a variety of choices about the role of the office and their future workplace plans, these plans almost always involve some aspect of hybrid work.”
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative sought confidential advice from “private-sector advisory committees,” believed to be under the Industry Trade Advisory Committee (ITAC) program managed jointly by USTR and the Commerce Department, before imposing the List 3 Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, Stephen Vaughn, the agency’s then-general counsel, wrote USTR Robert Lighthizer Sept. 17, 2018. The document was one of about a dozen “decision memos” spanning 488 pages that DOJ filed Thursday in the Section 301 litigation docket (1:21-cv-52) at the U.S. Court of International Trade as an “appendix” to oral argument held there Feb. 1 (see 2202010053).