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Taiwan’s president has pledged to spice up procurement and funding within the US as he rushes to answer Donald Trump’s international tariff threats and strain on Taiwan’s semiconductor business.
“We’ll enhance funding within the US and purchases from it to steadiness bilateral commerce,” Lai Ching-te informed reporters on Friday, simply hours after the US president introduced plans to impose “reciprocal tariffs” on international locations with which the US runs giant commerce deficits.
The US commerce deficit with Taiwan, its seventh-largest buying and selling companion, widened by $26.1bn to $73.9bn final 12 months, pushed by booming demand for cutting-edge synthetic intelligence chips. Most are made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Firm, the world’s largest chipmaker.
However Lai asserted Taiwan’s main position in international chip manufacturing and pushed again in opposition to Trump’s calls for that semiconductor enterprise — which the US president has accused Taiwan of “stealing” — be returned to America.
“I need to emphasise that because the world’s most potent semiconductor [manufacturing] energy, Taiwan is succesful and keen to answer new conditions,” stated Lai.
He vowed to “guarantee Taiwan’s indispensability within the international provide chain” and proposed a “international semiconductor democratic provide chain initiative” with a purpose to assist the US construct extra resilient provide chains — a co-operative imaginative and prescient distinct from Trump’s protectionist push to pay attention the business at dwelling.
Following strain from the primary Trump and Biden administrations in addition to its US prospects, TSMC has committed to investing $65bn in three fabrication vegetation in Arizona, the primary of which is already in mass manufacturing. Though the vegetation will nonetheless account for lower than a fifth of TSMC’s complete capability when accomplished, they’re the corporate’s largest abroad funding.
However Trump has threatened to overturn subsidy offers granted beneath his predecessor, a transfer that might put greater than $6bn of monetary help for TSMC in danger. Trump additionally needs to rebuild chip manufacturing within the US at a a lot bigger scale.
When saying his newest tariff plans on Thursday, Trump repeated accusations that Taiwan “took our chip enterprise away”.
“We would like that enterprise again in the US,” he stated, “and in the event that they don’t carry it again, we’re not going to be very joyful.”
Lai on Friday affirmed that Taipei was the US’s “most dependable buying and selling companion” and invoked the international locations’ shared democratic values.
However he stated the Trump administration was pursuing “methods and insurance policies which are utterly totally different from the previous”, including that this posed challenges for all different international locations, together with Taiwan.
