1. Sales of semiconductor equipment in Japan will reach an all-time high for four consecutive years by 2023. Fiscal year 2021 is expected to grow by 40.8% over the previous fiscal year to 3.3567 trillion yen. Driven by the demand for home and office work, the demand for semiconductors expanded more than expected. Investment related to environmental protection for decarbonization has also driven the growth of demand for semiconductors.

2. Germany: finance minister Christian Lindner said he wanted a 15 per cent minimum global corporate tax rate for multinationals as early as January 2023. Peter Adrian, chairman of the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, called for the tax policy to be implemented fairly.

3. Italy’s consumer price index returned to growth in 2021, rising 1.9%, the highest level since 2012, according to statistics released by Italy’s National Statistics Institute on January 17, local time. Data show that Italy’s consumer price index rose 0.4% month-on-month in December 2021, with an inflation rate of 3.9%.

4. South Korea’s main delivery platform recently raised the basic delivery fee by up to 1100 won, with an average delivery fee of about 32 yuan per order, double that of 2020. Today, the takeout market is hot, riders are in short supply, platforms can only carry out a “war of robbing people” through high commissions, and labor costs are increasing, so the increase in distribution fees is also seen by the industry as an inevitable result.

5. The global shipping market will continue to be hot in 2021. Global shipping giant Maersk expects actual profits of $24 billion last year. The Suez Canal Authority still has a record annual revenue of $6.3 billion, up 12.8 per cent from a year earlier. The global shipping industry is expected to make record profits of more than $150 billion in 2021, according to data. It was only $25.4 billion in 2020, a nearly fivefold increase over the same period last year.

6. Sales of Rolls-Royce, one of the representative brands of luxury cars, reached the highest annual sales in the 117-year history of 5586 vehicles in 2021, an increase of 49 per cent from the previous year. Torsten Miller-Utterfuss, CEO of Rolls-Royce: the epidemic has made many consumers feel that life is short, and the need to enjoy life, coupled with reduced spending in some areas, makes many people more willing to pay for luxury cars.

7. On the 16th local time, the French presidential palace announced that France had won 21 investment projects of more than 4 billion euros, including a plastic recycling plant invested by Eastman in the United States of America of 850 million euros. Sweden’s Ikea invested 650 million euros in circular economy and sustainable transportation projects. The French presidential palace estimates that these investments will add 26000 jobs to France.

8. Osama Rabbi, chairman and general manager of the Suez Canal Authority, said in Dubai on Sunday that 20694 ships passed through the Suez Canal last year, generating $6.3 billion in revenue. In addition, the rabbi said that although the Suez Canal will raise prices by 6 per cent from February, this year’s volume will be higher because shipbuilders are increasing capacity.

9. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Monday that the Treasury Department had taken key steps over the past year to address the long-standing economic injustices faced by people of color in the United States, but that there was still “more work to be done” to narrow the ethnic wealth gap. In 2019, white households, which account for 60 per cent of the US population, own 85.5 per cent of the wealth, while black households own only 4.2 per cent and Hispanics account for only 3.1 per cent of the wealth, according to Fed data. According to USAFacts.org, a nonpartisan nonprofit, these figures are virtually unchanged from 30 years ago.