HONG KONG — The United States and Taiwan reached a trade deal last Thursday that cuts tariffs on Taiwanese goods in exchange for $250 billion in new investments in the U.S. tech industry.
The deal is the latest President Donald Trump has struck — such as those with the European Union and Japan — since he unveiled a sweeping tariff plan last April to address trade imbalances. Trump also has a one-year trade truce with China to stabilize ties with the world’s second-largest economy.
Trump initially set the tariff at 32% on Taiwanese goods but later changed it to 20%. The new agreement cuts the tariff rate to 15%, the same as levied on other U.S. trading partners in the Asia-Pacific region, such as Japan and South Korea.
In a statement, the U.S. Department of Commerce said the deal with Taiwan would establish an “economic partnership” to create several “world-class” U.S.-based industrial parks to help build up domestic production. The department described it as “a historic trade deal that will drive a massive reshoring of America’s semiconductor sector.”
The Taiwanese government affirmed key details in the deal in a statement, saying the “Taiwan model” will go to the U.S. and help expand the global competitiveness of the island’s technology industry while deepening strategic cooperation between the two nations.
Taiwan’s executive branch said the island’s companies would specifically invest $250 billion in industries such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence applications and energy.
In addition to cutting the tariffs on the island nation, the Commerce Department said it will exempt certain imports such as generic pharmaceuticals and aircraft components from Taiwan.
One day before the deal was announced, Beijing, which claims Taiwan to be part of China, scoffed at it, calling the agreement “an economic plunder” by the U.S. on Taiwan.
The deal came just when Taiwan-based TSMC, the world’s largest computer chipmaker, last Thursday announced plans to increase its capital spending by as much as nearly 40% this year after it reported a 35% jump in its net profit for the latest quarter thanks to the boom in artificial intelligence.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., a major supplier to companies including Nvidia and Apple, reported a net profit of 506 billion new Taiwan dollars ($16 billion) for the October-December quarter, a 35% surge from a year earlier, better than analysts’ estimates.
TSMC said that its revenue in the last quarter increased 21% from a year earlier to more than 1.046 trillion new Taiwan dollars ($33 billion).
TSMC said it plans to boost its capital expenditure budget to $52 billion to $56 billion for 2026, up from about $40 billion last year.
The company’s Taiwan-listed shares have jumped 59% over the past 12 months, reflecting its strong position in the AI-driven market.
Other tech giants, including Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet, are spending big on investments in AI infrastructure.
“We expect our business to be supported by continuous strong demand for our leading-edge process technologies,” Wendell Huang, TSMC’s chief financial officer, said in a conference call. He said spending would be “significantly higher” in the next three years.
Asked about concerns over an AI bubble — as critics point to ballooning investments that might not pay off — TSMC chairman and CEO C. C. Wei said he is confident the growing demand from customers is real.
“I’m also very nervous about it, you bet,” said Wei. “AI is real. Not only real, but it’s also starting to grow into our daily life.”
With a market capitalization — total outstanding shares times share price — of approximately $1.4 trillion, TSMC is currently more valuable than Samsung Electronics and Alibaba. It is Asia’s most valuable listed company.
Alphabet, Google’s parent, passed the $4 trillion market capitalization mark this month, the fourth Big Tech company to hit that mark after Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft, although worries about an AI bubble had led to occasional selloffs.
TSMC has pledged around $165 billion of investments in the U.S. and said last Thursday it’s speeding up construction of new plants in Arizona, looking to create a fabrication plant cluster and meet strong demand from clients.
A primary beneficiary of AI, given its dominant share in cutting-edge chip manufacturing, TSMC’s outlook remains optimistic, analysts from Morningstar said in a recent report.
“(TSMC) is immune from market share shifts as almost every AI company relies on TSMC to make chips ranging from application-specific integrated circuits to GPUs (graphics processing units),” the Morningstar analysts said. “This reliance translates into strong pricing power.”
