Taiwanese chipmaking giant TSMC is freed from the 100% tariff of US President Donald Trump on semiconductor chips, said Taipei on Thursday.
The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is the world’s largest contract manufacturer of chips and has Nvidia and Apple among its customers.
“Since Taiwan’s main exporter is TSMC, which has factories in the United States, TSMC is excluded,” Liu Chin-Ching, head of the National Development Council, told a briefing in parliament.
Some Taiwanese chip makers are “affected” by the 100% tariff, but their competitors will also be exposed to the same tax, said Liu.
“Taiwan currently has a leading position in the world and I think that if the leader and competitors are in the same start line, the leader will continue to lead,” said Liu.
“This is our current preliminary assessment, but we will continue to observe and suggest short -term and medium -term help.”
Liu spoke hours after Trump said in the White House: “We will set chips and semiconductors a very large tariff”.
The level would be “100%”, Trump told reporters, although he did not offer a schedule for the time of the new cancellation.
Trump said that companies that build up in the United States or have committed themselves to building were not built up.
Taiwan is a global power package in the Semiconductor production, with more than half of the global chips and almost all high-end manufacturers.
TSMC was in Trump’s crosshairs, who accused Taiwan of stealing the US chip industry.
There had been hope that TSMC’s plan to invest another 100 billion US dollars in the United States would protect Taiwan from new tariffs.
Taiwan has also undertaken to increase investments in the United States, to buy more energy in the United States and to increase defense expenses to more than three percent of GDP to derive Trump’s taxes.
Trump has imposed a temporary tariff of 20%, except semiconductors, as the negotiators of the United States and the Taiwanese negotiations try to complete a deal.
