Taiwanese chipmaking giant TSMC “is exempt” from US President Donald Trump’s 100 percent tariff on semiconductor chips, Taipei said Thursday.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is the world’s largest contract maker of chips and counts Nvidia and Apple among its clients.
“Because Taiwan’s main exporter is TSMC, which has factories in the United States, TSMC is exempt,” National Development Council chief Liu Chin-ching told a briefing in parliament.
Some Taiwanese chipmakers “will be affected” by the 100 percent tariff, but their competitors will also face the same levy, Liu said.
“Taiwan currently holds a leading position in the world and I believe that if the leader and competitors are on the same starting line, the leader will continue to lead,” Liu said.
“This is our current preliminary assessment, but we will continue to observe and propose short-term and medium-term assistance.”
Liu was speaking hours after Trump said at the White House that “we’re going to be putting a very large tariff on chips and semiconductors”.
The level would be “100 percent”, Trump told reporters, although he did not offer a timetable for when the new levy would be enacted.
Trump said companies that were “building in the United States, or have committed to build” would not be charged.
Taiwan is a global powerhouse in semiconductor manufacturing, with more than half of the world’s chips and nearly all of the high-end ones made there.
TSMC has been in the crosshairs of Trump, who has accused Taiwan of stealing the US chip industry.
There had been hopes TSMC’s plan to invest an additional US$100 billion in the United States would shield Taiwan from new tariffs.
Taiwan has also pledged to increase investment in the United States, purchase more US energy and boost defence spending to more than three percent of GDP in a bid to head off Trump’s levies.
Trump has imposed a temporary 20 percent tariff on Taiwan, excluding semiconductors, as US and Taiwanese negotiators try to thrash out a deal.
