Taiwan Senior Official: "Trump's Semiconductor Tariffs Will Not Significantly Impact TSMC"

[Financial News] A senior official from the Taiwan government predicted that the semiconductor tariffs imposed by Donald Trump's U.S. administration would not significantly impact Taiwan's TSMC.
According to Taiwan media such as China Times on the 27th, Liu Jingqing, the chief commissioner (minister level) of Taiwan's National Development Council (NDC), the largest shareholder (6.38%) of TSMC, said in an interview with Nikkei Asia during his visit to Japan for the 'Taiwan-Japan Innovation Summit' that the impact of the Trump administration's semiconductor tariffs would be limited.
Chief Commissioner Liu stated, "TSMC is currently making direct investments in the U.S., and the proportion of semiconductor component exports from Taiwan is only 1%, so the impact of semiconductor tariffs will be limited," emphasizing that "even if the Trump administration imposes tariffs on semiconductors, it will have little impact on TSMC's operations."
Chief Commissioner Liu explained that negotiations are underway to reduce the tax burden on Taiwanese companies, including state governments in Texas and Arizona where Taiwanese companies have entered.
He also expressed hope that if Taiwanese companies build factories in the U.S. in the future, they would receive tax benefits from the U.S. local government.
Previously, TSMC announced in March that it would invest an additional 100 billion dollars (approximately 139 trillion won) to expand factories and increase production in the U.S. This is in addition to the existing investment plan of 65 billion dollars (approximately 90 trillion won). The final plan is to have six advanced wafer manufacturing plants and two advanced packaging plants in the U.S. In April, they broke ground on their third plant in Arizona.
Meanwhile, Chief Commissioner Liu of the NDC commented on the TSMC advanced technology leak incident involving an employee of the Taiwan subsidiary of Tokyo Electron (TEL), saying, "TSMC will decide on countermeasures based on the results of the investigation."
He stated that Taiwanese companies already have deep ties with Japanese semiconductor equipment companies and that "this incident will not affect these relationships." 


sjmary@fnnews.com Seo Hye-jin Reporter