Industry News

Container rates from the Far East to the US have jumped more than 320 percent since February 2026 as the Iran conflict disrupts the Strait of Hormuz, with analysts saying a new all-time record on the East Coast trade is now plausible.

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines now says Strait of Hormuz shipping disruptions may not normalize until 2027, as Asian spot LNG prices hit a five-month high and European gas trades near its highest level since early 2023.

ISO has officially published ISO 9001:2026, the first full revision of the world's most widely used quality-management standard since 2015, adding explicit climate-change and ethical-leadership requirements — but has not yet announced a transition deadline for certified organizations.

China's industry ministry has frozen approvals for new EV and energy-storage battery plants after planned 2026 capacity reached roughly 1.5 times last year's total output, tightening supply discipline across the global battery chain.

ISO plans to publish ISO 9001:2026 on September 16, 2026, the first full revision of the world's most-used quality management standard since 2015, following FDIS approval on August 7, 2026; certified organizations get an expected three-year transition window.

Starting 1 October 2026, EU steel importers must prove the country where their steel was melted and poured, backed by Mill Test Certificates, under a new anti-circumvention rule tied to the bloc's steel safeguard quotas.

Starting September 14, 2026, US Customs will reject — not just flag — copper import entries that omit smelt-and-cast country data, turning a Section 232 traceability requirement into a hard compliance gate for global copper trade.

Foxconn's August revenue jumped 52% year-on-year to a record $29.1 billion as AI server assembly for Nvidia and major cloud providers overtook smartphones, marking the first time cloud/networking products topped half of the contract manufacturer's total sales.

Starting September 14, 2026, US Customs will reject — not just flag — copper import entries that omit smelt-and-cast country data, turning a Section 232 traceability requirement into a hard compliance gate for global copper trade.

Foxconn's August revenue jumped 52% year-on-year to a record $29.1 billion as AI server assembly for Nvidia and major cloud providers overtook smartphones, marking the first time cloud/networking products topped half of the contract manufacturer's total sales.

Canada's retaliatory tariffs on $27.6 billion of U.S. goods took effect September 8, doubling duties on steel and aluminum to 50% and deepening a North American trade rift that is unraveling the USMCA trade framework.

Some Chinese rare earth suppliers have quietly halted shipments of yttrium, terbium and gallium to the United States and Japan since August, after Beijing placed a Western supply-chain auditing group on its countermeasures list, tightening availability of materials critical to chips, EVs, aerospace and defense.

A historic, AI-driven memory chip shortage has pushed smartphone DRAM and NAND costs up nearly 400% year over year, forcing Apple to raise iPhone, MacBook and iPad prices by up to $300-$500 as Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron redirect capacity toward AI data centers.

Copper hit a fresh all-time high on the London Metal Exchange this week as traders priced in a possible US tariff on refined metal alongside a widening structural supply gap.

Hyundai Steel and POSCO broke ground on a $5.8 billion electric-arc-furnace steel mill in Louisiana this week -- the first integrated automotive steel plant either company has built outside South Korea, and the first greenfield US steel mill in six decades.

U.S. LNG exports averaged 17.4 Bcf/d in the first half of 2026, up 23% year on year as new liquefaction capacity ramped up. Plaquemines, Corpus Christi Stage 3 and Golden Pass are reshaping export capacity and the physical supply available to global gas markets.

Foxconn reported record August revenue of NT$921.8 billion, up 51.98% year on year, as demand for AI-related products remained strong. The result is a useful manufacturing signal for the wider AI-server supply chain, but it does not disclose how much of total revenue came from AI servers.