Markets yesterday welcomed a US tariffs reprieve for electronics, but US President Donald Trump warned no country would get “off the hook” in his trade war — especially China, while pledging to impose tariffs on semiconductors in the “not distant future.”
While the US on Friday listed tariff exemptions for smartphones, laptops, semiconductors and other electronic products for which China is a major source, Trump and some of his top aides said on Sunday that the exemptions had been misconstrued and would only be temporary as his team pursued fresh tariffs against many items on the list.
“NOBODY is getting ‘off the hook’ ... especially not China which, by far, treats us the worst,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.
Photo: Reuters
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday said that protectionism “will lead nowhere” and a trade war would “produce no winner.”
Shares in Taiwan yesterday closed slightly lower, with initial gains eroded as lingering concerns over the Trump administration’s tariffs on semiconductors continued to hurt market sentiment.
The TAIEX closed down 15.68 points, or 0.08 percent, at 19,513.09, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the most heavily weighted stock on the local market, lost 2.7 percent.
“Investors simply took the money and ran after trimming their holdings in TSMC as the TAIEX rebounded today,” Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) said. “They fear Trump’s tariffs on semiconductors will bomb the market.”
Other Asian and European stock markets yesterday rallied over the news of Washington’s new exemptions. The Paris, Frankfurt and London stock exchanges were up about 2 percent in morning deals, while Tokyo finished 1.2 percent higher, Seoul gained 1 percent and Hong Kong jumped 2.3 percent.
Shanghai picked up 0.8 percent after the latest data showed that China’s exports last month surged 12.4 percent from a year earlier.
However, the relief could be short-lived, with some of the exempted consumer electronics targeted for upcoming sector-specific tariffs on goods deemed key to US national defense networks.
On Air Force One on Sunday, Trump told reporters that tariffs on semiconductors “will be in place in the not distant future.”
“Like we did with steel, like we did with automobiles, like we did with aluminum ... we’ll be doing that with semiconductors, with chips and numerous other things,” he said.
“We want to make our chips and semiconductors and other things in our country,” Trump reiterated, adding that he would do the same with “drugs and pharmaceuticals.”
The US president said he would announce tariffs rates for semiconductors “over the next week,” while US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said they would likely be in place “in a month or two.”
The White House insists the aggressive policy is bearing fruit, saying dozens of countries have already opened trade negotiations to secure deals before the 90-day pause ends.
“We’re working around the clock, day and night, sharing paper, receiving offers and giving feedback to these countries,” US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday.
Additional reporting by CNA with staff writer
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
RSS