Taiwan’s trade deficit with South Korea continued to widen in the first nine months of this year, with imports rising more quickly than exports, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said in a report yesterday.
Taiwan had long had a trade deficit with South Korea, ranging between US$800 million to US$5.5 billion from 2016 to 2020, the DGBAS said, citing Customs Administration data.
The deficit widened further last year to US$10.5 billion, as imports from South Korea rose 50 percent annually to US$30.64 billion, outpacing the 30 percent annual increase in exports to US$20.14 billion, the DGBAS said.
The trend continued in the first nine months of this year, as exports to South Korea rose 18.6 percent year-on-year to US$17.24 billion, accounting for 4.7 percent of total exports, while imports from the country rose 20.5 percent annually to US$26.65 billion, Ministry of Finance data showed.
That resulted in a trade deficit of US$9.40 billion, up 24.3 percent from a year earlier.
Taiwan and South Korea trade mostly in semiconductors, which drive the two economies’ exports of electronic goods to the rest of the world, but South Korea’s dominance in DRAM seems to have given it an edge over Taiwan in terms of trade balance, the DGBAS said.
Taiwan’s exports of electronic components to South Korea, which accounted for 67.9 percent of total exports to the country, grew 25.7 percent from a year earlier in the first nine months.
More than 90 percent of the components were semiconductors, whose exports to South Korea rose 25.2 percent year-on-year during the same period, the agency said.
However, the nation’s imports of electronic components from South Korea, which accounted for 60.1 percent of all imports from the country, rose 24.7 percent annually, it said.
Imports of semiconductors excluding DRAM rose 46 percent while those of DRAM gained 1.7 percent, it added.
RECYCLE: Taiwan would aid manufacturers in refining rare earths from discarded appliances, which would fit the nation’s circular economy goals, minister Kung said Taiwan would work with the US and Japan on a proposed cooperation initiative in response to Beijing’s newly announced rare earth export curbs, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. China last week announced new restrictions requiring companies to obtain export licenses if their products contain more than 0.1 percent of Chinese-origin rare earths by value. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Wednesday responded by saying that Beijing was “unreliable” in its rare earths exports, adding that the US would “neither be commanded, nor controlled” by China, several media outlets reported. Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato yesterday also
Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), founder and CEO of US-based artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday celebrated the first Nvidia Blackwell wafer produced on US soil. Huang visited TSMC’s advanced wafer fab in the US state of Arizona and joined the Taiwanese chipmaker’s executives to witness the efforts to “build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI factories, right here in America,” Nvidia said in a statement. At the event, Huang joined Y.L. Wang (王英郎), vice president of operations at TSMC, in signing their names on the Blackwell wafer to
‘DRAMATIC AND POSITIVE’: AI growth would be better than it previously forecast and would stay robust even if the Chinese market became inaccessible for customers, it said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its full-year revenue growth outlook after posting record profit for last quarter, despite growing market concern about an artificial intelligence (AI) bubble. The company said it expects revenue to expand about 35 percent year-on-year, driven mainly by faster-than-expected demand for leading-edge chips for AI applications. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker in July projected that revenue this year would expand about 30 percent in US dollar terms. The company also slightly hiked its capital expenditure for this year to US$40 billion to US$42 billion, compared with US$38 billion to US$42 billion it set previously. “AI demand actually
RARE EARTHS: The call between the US Treasury Secretary and his Chinese counterpart came as Washington sought to rally G7 partners in response to China’s export controls China and the US on Saturday agreed to conduct another round of trade negotiations in the coming week, as the world’s two biggest economies seek to avoid another damaging tit-for-tat tariff battle. Beijing last week announced sweeping controls on the critical rare earths industry, prompting US President Donald Trump to threaten 100 percent tariffs on imports from China in retaliation. Trump had also threatened to cancel his expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in South Korea later this month on the sidelines of the APEC summit. In the latest indication of efforts to resolve their dispute, Chinese state media reported that
RSS