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By Nora Eckert and Nathan Gomes (Reuters) -Stellantis announced a $13 billion investment in the U.S. on Tuesday, a move it said will bring five new models to the market and add 5,000 jobs in plants across the Midwest over the next four years. The plan, which includes some previously disclosed investments, may help buffer Stellantis from U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs, which the automaker has said would cost it around $1.7 billion this year. The investment, which Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa said is the largest in its history, comes as the automaker works to regain its sales momentum in one of its most important markets. "Tariffs are getting clearer and clearer. And we believe that tariffs will be just another variable of our business equation that we need to be ready to manage, and we will," Filosa told Reuters in an interview. U.S.-listed shares of Stellantis were up about 4% in after-hours trade. The investment will infuse new capital into plants in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio and Indiana. Some of the factories are slated to receive new models, while others will have expanded production of existing vehicles. One of the plants at the center of the company's announcement, a factory in Belvidere, Illinois, has been a sticking point for the United Auto Workers union, which last year threatened a strike against the Franco-Italian automaker. "Their decision today proves that targeted auto tariffs can, in fact, bring back thousands of good union jobs to the U.S.," UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement. The factory, which was shuttered in 2023, is reopening and will produce two Jeep models starting in 2027, creating around 3,300 jobs, the company said. "Filling Stellantis' underutilized plants should be a welcome announcement for UAW workers," said Sam Fiorani, vice president at research firm AutoForecast Solutions. Stellantis leadership disclosed elements of the plan to employees earlier this year, including some of the investments in the Belvidere plant, and factories in Ohio and Indiana. Tuesday's announcement pegs the investment amount and the number of jobs that will be created, which is a larger figure than had been previously given. The company declined to quantify how much of the $13 billion announcement was previously laid out. Filosa, who became CEO in June, is tasked with turning around the carmaker's sagging U.S. market share. Dealers complained that the company's strategy under former CEO Carlos Tavares left them with models that were priced too high relative to competitors, and hurt sales.  Tavares abruptly resigned in December, and the automaker conducted a months-long search for his successor before appointing Filosa, an Italian national who joined the company in 1999. Filosa is expected to unveil a new strategic plan in the second quarter of next year, after recently delaying it from the first quarter. (Reporting by Nora Eckert in Detroit; Additional reporting by Nathan Gomes in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Christopher Cushing)

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By Max A. Cherney (Reuters) -Intel announced on Tuesday a new artificial intelligence chip for the data center that it plans to launch next year, in a renewed push to break into the AI chip market. The new chip (GPU) will be optimized for energy efficiency and support a wide range of uses such as running AI applications, or inference, Intel Chief Technology Officer Sachin Katti said at the Open Compute Summit on Tuesday. "It emphasizes that focus that I talked about earlier, inference, optimized for AI, optimized, optimized for delivering the best token economics out there, the best performance per dollar out there," Katti said. The new chip, called Crescent Island, is the struggling U.S. chipmaker's latest attempt to capitalize on the frenzy in AI spending that has generated billions in revenue for AMD and Nvidia.  The company's plans trail behind competitors and represent the significant challenge Intel's executives and engineers face to capture a meaningful portion of the market for AI chips and systems. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has vowed to restart the company's stalled AI efforts after the company effectively mothballed projects such as the Gaudi line of chips and Falcon Shores processor.  Crescent Island will feature 160 gigabytes of a slower form of memory than the high bandwidth memory (HBM) that is found on AMD and Nvidia's data center AI chips. The chip will be based on a design that Intel has used for its consumer GPUs. Intel did not disclose which manufacturing process Crescent Island would use. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. MIX AND MATCH Since the generative AI boom with the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in November 2022, startups and large cloud operators have rushed to grab GPUs that help run AI workloads on data center servers. The demand explosion has led to a supply crunch and sky-high prices for chips designed or suited for AI applications. Katti said at the San Jose trade show that the company would release new data center AI chips every year, which would match the annual cadence set by AMD, Nvidia and several of the cloud computing companies that make their own chips. Nvidia has dominated the market to build large AI models such as the one used for ChatGPT. Tan has said the company plans to focus its design efforts on building chips useful for running those AI models – which work behind the scenes to make AI software operate. "Instead of trying to build for every workload out there, our focus is increasingly going to be on inference," Katti said. Intel has taken an open and modular approach in which customers can mix and match chips from different vendors, Katti said. Nvidia said last month it would invest $5 billion in Intel, taking a roughly 4% stake and becoming one of its largest shareholders as part of a partnership to co-develop future PC and data center chips. The deal is part of Intel's effort to ensure that Intel's central processors (CPUs) are installed in every AI system that gets sold, Katti said.  (Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru and Max Cherney in San Francisco; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar and Stephen Coates)

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By Scott Murdoch SYDNEY (Reuters) -Commonwealth Bank of Australia Chief Executive Matt Comyn will remain at the helm of the country's largest lender for at least the next three years, its chair said on Wednesday, presiding over one of the most expensive banks in the world. Chairperson Paul O'Malley told the bank's annual meeting in Brisbane the search for the next chief executive would begin after his own next three-year term on the board ends. O'Malley is standing for re-election at Wednesday's meeting. His next term is due to end in 2028. "We have been pleased with the performance of Matt as CEO," O'Malley told the meeting. "Our intention and expectation is that the decision as to the appointment of the next CEO will be made by the board led by my successor as Chair." Comyn has been chief executive for seven years, meaning at least another three years would take his tenure to a decade. Australia does not impose time limits on chief executive tenures but typically their terms are between five to seven years. Chairs and chief executives typically do not leave at similar times to ensure company continuity. (Reporting by Scott Murdoch; Editing by Sonali Paul)

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By Lisa Baertlein, Liz Lee and Joe Cash BEIJING/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -The U.S. and China on Tuesday began charging additional port fees on ocean shipping firms that move everything from holiday toys to crude oil, making the high seas a key front in the trade war between the world's two largest economies. A return to an all-out trade war appeared imminent last week, after China announced a major expansion of its rare earths export controls and President Donald Trump threatened to raise tariffs on Chinese goods to triple digits. But after the weekend, both sides sought to reassure traders and investors, highlighting cooperation between their negotiating teams and the possibility they could find a way forward. China said it had started to collect the special charges on U.S.-owned, operated, built or flagged vessels but clarified that Chinese-built ships would be exempted from the levies. In details published by state broadcaster CCTV, China spelled out specific provisions on exemptions, which also include empty ships entering Chinese shipyards for repair. Similar to the U.S. plan, the new China-imposed fees would be collected at the first port of entry on a single voyage or for the first five voyages within a year.  "This tit-for-tat symmetry locks both economies into a spiral of maritime taxation that risks distorting global freight flows," Athens-based Xclusiv Shipbrokers said in a research note. Early this year, the Trump administration announced plans to levy the fees on China-linked ships to loosen the country's grip on the global maritime industry and bolster U.S. shipbuilding. An investigation during the former Biden administration concluded that China uses unfair policies and practices to dominate the global maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors, clearing the way for those penalties. China hit back last week, saying it would impose its own port fees on U.S.-linked vessels from the same day the U.S. fees took effect. "We are in the hectic stage of the disruption where everyone is quietly trying to improvise workarounds, with varying degrees of success," said independent dry bulk shipping analyst Ed Finley-Richardson. He said he has heard reports of U.S. shipowners with non-Chinese vessels trying to sell their cargoes to other countries while en route so the vessels can divert. Reuters was not immediately able to confirm. Analysts expect China-owned container carrier COSCO to be most affected by the U.S. fees, shouldering nearly half of that segment's expected $3.2 billion cost from those fees in 2026.  Major container lines, including Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd and CMA CGM, slashed their exposure by switching China-linked ships out of their U.S. shipping lanes. Trade officials there reduced fees from initially proposed levels and exempted a broad swath of vessels after heavy pushback from the agriculture, energy and U.S. shipping industries. USTR did not immediately respond to a request for comment. China's commerce ministry on Tuesday said, "If the U.S. chooses confrontation, China will see it through to the end; if it chooses dialogue, China's door remains open."   In a related move, Beijing also imposed sanctions on Tuesday against five U.S.-linked subsidiaries of South Korean shipbuilder Hanwha Ocean which it said had "assisted and supported" a U.S. probe into Chinese trade practices. Hanwha, one of the world's largest shipbuilders, owns Philly Shipyard in the U.S. and has won contracts to repair and overhaul U.S. Navy ships. Its entities also will build a U.S.-flagged LNG carrier.  Hanwha said it is aware of the announcement and is closely monitoring the potential business impact, and that it will continue to provide services to its customers, "including through our investments in the U.S. maritime industry and via Hanwha Philly Shipyard." Hanwha Ocean's shares sank nearly 6%. China also launched an investigation into how the U.S. probe affected its shipping and shipbuilding industries. SHIPPING LINES SCRAMBLE FOR WORKAROUNDS A Shanghai-based trade consultant said the new fees may not cause significant upheaval.   "What are we going to do? Stop shipping? Trade is already pretty disrupted with the U.S., but companies are finding a way," said the consultant, who requested anonymity because he was not authorised to speak with the media. The U.S. announced last Friday a carve-out for long-term charterers of China-operated vessels carrying U.S. ethane and LPG, deferring the port fees for them through December 10. Meanwhile, ship-tracking company Vortexa identified 45 LPG-carrying VLGCs – 11% of the total fleet – that would be subject to China's port fee.  Clarksons Research said in a report that China's new port fees could affect oil tankers accounting for 15% of global capacity. Jefferies analyst Omar Nokta estimated that 13% of crude tankers and 11% of container ships in the global fleet would be affected. TRADE WAR EXPANDS TO ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY In a reprisal against China curbing exports of critical minerals, Trump on Friday threatened to slap additional 100% tariffs on goods from China and put new export controls on "any and all critical software" by November 1. Administration officials hours later warned that countries voting in favor of a plan by the U.N. International Maritime Organization to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from ocean shipping this week could face sanctions, port bans, or punitive vessel charges. China has publicly supported the IMO plan. "The weaponisation of both trade and environmental policy signals that shipping has moved from being a neutral conduit of global commerce to a direct instrument of statecraft," Xclusiv said.   Shares in Shanghai-listed COSCO rose more than 2% in early trading on Tuesday. The company said its board had approved a plan to buy back up to 1.5 billion yuan ($210.3 million) worth of its shares within the next three months to maintain corporate value and safeguard shareholder interests. The shipping firm did not immediately respond to Reuters' queries about the port fees. ($1 = 7.1337 Chinese yuan) (Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles, Arathy Somasekhar and Georgina McCartney in Houston, Liz Lee, Joe Cash and Sam Li in Beijing and Heejin Kim in Seoul; Additional reporting by Samuel Shen and Brenda Goh in Shanghai and James Pomfret in Hong Kong; Editing by Stephen Coates, Kim Coghill and Lisa Shumaker)

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