Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week.
The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US.
Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them.
Photo: CNA
Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US was the sixth-largest in the world, behind China, Mexico, Vietnam, Ireland and Germany, central bank data showed.
Asked about the possibility of Taiwan being included in the list, Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs Cynthia Kiang (江文若) told lawmakers that the government was taking steps to reduce the trade imbalance, including drawing up a list of potential goods that could be purchased from the US.
For example, state-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) last week signed a letter of intent to buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Alaska Gasline Development Corp and invest in its Alaska LNG project, Kiang said.
Taiwan is also considering increasing oil imports from the US in a bid to boost energy cooperation and enhance natural gas supply stability, she added.
However, Taiwan’s purchasing targets and the status of its negotiations with the US government cannot be made public for the time being, Kiang said.
Chuang and Kiang made the remarks at a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee yesterday, a day after the central bank in a report defended Taiwan’s trade and currency record, saying that the high current account surplus was a structural problem and that Washington understood that.
Taiwan’s trade surplus with the US surged 83 percent last year compared with 2023, with exports to the US hitting a record US$111.4 billion, up 46.1 percent year-on-year, driven by demand for high-tech products such as semiconductors, a sector dominated by Taiwan.
Asked if tariffs on vehicles would be reduced, given that Trump announced a 25 percent tariff on auto imports, Kiang said a specially created trade task force had “already drafted relevant plans,” while Chuang said that import tariffs on health supplements and other products would be reduced.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
MORTGAGE WORRIES: About 34% of respondents to a survey said they would approach multiple lenders to pay for a home, while 29.2% said they would ask family for help New housing projects in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu city and county, are projected to total NT$710.65 billion (US$23.61 billion) in the upcoming fall sales season, a record 30 percent decrease from a year earlier, as tighter mortgage rules prompt developers to pull back, property listing platform 591.com (591新建案) said yesterday. The number of projects has also fallen to 312, a more than 20 percent decrease year-on-year, underscoring weakening sentiment and momentum amid lingering policy and financing headwinds. New Taipei City and Taoyuan bucked the downturn in project value, while Taipei, Hsinchu city and county, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung
RSS