Citic in talks with US car makers in effort to limit potential financial damage from planned punishing tariffs
Conglomerate’s ‘special’ steel product sales grow 34pc to 5.7m tonnes. Excluding asset revaluation gains of HK$5.4b on the year-earlier period and the impact of the yuan’s depreciation, group net interim profit grew 6pc
Citic Ltd, the listed flagship of China’s largest conglomerate and one of the world’s largest producers of aluminium vehicle wheels, is in talks with its main customers in the US to try to hammer out deals to mitigate the potential tariffs to be imposed as the Sino-US trade war rumbles on.
“The actual figures [involved] are unclear and still being ascertained,” vice-chairman Wang Jiong told reporters, after being quizzed about the level of tariffs those two products it exports to the US may be subject to.
“We have hired lawyers to explain the actual situation at a public hearing”, he added, and a consultation process is taking place in the US on the proposed levies.
Gladly for the firm, Wang said the US accounts for only a small portion of Citic’s such “special” steel exports.
Citic posted an interim 31 per cent year-on-year jump in profits from those special items to HK$1.6 billion (US$203.8 million) as product sales grew 34 per cent to 5.7 million tonnes. But overall first-half net profit actually fell 5 per cent.
