Total trade with Germany last year surpassed US$20 billion for the first time, the German Trade Office Taipei said.
The figure rose to a record US$20.7 billion, up 27.5 percent from US$16.2 billion in 2020, the office said in a statement.
“German-Taiwanese trade relations developed overwhelmingly positively in 2021, defying the [COVID-19] pandemic,” office Executive Director Axel Limberg said in a statement.
Germany last year retained its position as Taiwan’s most important trade partner in Europe, Limberg said.
It is particularly gratifying that imports and exports between Germany and Taiwan rose significantly, indicating that bilateral economic relations are mutually beneficial, he said.
Taiwan’s exports to Germany were US$8.2 billion last year, up 35.4 percent year-on-year, while imports accounted for US$12.5 billion, up 22.8 percent from a year earlier, according to Ministry of Finance data cited by the German Trade Office.
Exports of machinery and electrical equipment totaled US$4.2 billion last year, accounting for about half of all exports, with electronic parts, and information, communication and audio-video products among the most popular items, the data showed.
Machinery and electrical equipment were the top imports from Germany, worth almost US$4.9 billion, with machinery accounting for the biggest share with about 46 percent, the office said.
While overall approved foreign direct investment in Taiwan fell by 18.2 percent last year, German investment increased by 67.3 percent year-on-year to US$252.6 million, the office said, citing Ministry of Economic Affairs data.
Limberg said that technologies from both sides perfectly complement each other, and further expansion in international cooperation would be crucial to shaping key technologies such as Industry 4.0, artificial intelligence and biotechnology.
The office said that it would host an economic outlook meeting with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and major German companies in Taiwan on Feb. 22, during which they would assess “the current state of the German economy in Taiwan” and discuss the future of the Taiwanese economy, as well as key industries.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts