Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and other related companies would add ￥11.2 trillion (US$78.31 billion) to Japan’s chipmaking hot spot Kumamoto Prefecture over the next decade, a local bank’s analysis said.
Kyushu Financial Group, a lender based in Kumamoto’s capital, almost doubled its projection for the economic impact that the chip sector would bring to the region compared to its estimate a year earlier, a presentation on Thursday said.
The bank said that 171 firms had made new investments since November 2021, up from 90 in an earlier analysis.
Photo: EPA-EFE
TSMC’s Kumamoto location was once a sleepy farming area, but has undergone rapid growth as part of Japan’s chipmaking ambitions. TSMC, which opened its first plant there in February, is to start building a second by the end of the year and has shown intentions to construct a third.
The local economy is racing to keep up, with skyrocketing land prices and new infrastructure planned to deal with congestion from an influx of industry personnel. Kumamoto’s growth spurt has been supported by generous government subsidies, including grants totaling about ￥1.1 trillion for TSMC’s two plants to date.
Cooperation between Taiwan and Japan is increasingly crucial as supply chains become shorter and more regionally focused, a compound semiconductor company chairman said yesterday at a Taiwan-Japan exchange forum.
The global division of labor has been disrupted by the US-China trade and technology war, WIN Semiconductors Corp (穩懋) chairman Dennis Chen (陳進財) said.
“We have come to a point where there is no turning back, no matter who wins the presidency [in the next US presidential election],” he said during Semicon Taiwan.
However, localizing semiconductor manufacturing — widely regarded as a strategic resource — is easier said than done, as “every country has its specialty following 40 years of [globalized] supply chain development,” Chen said.
Taiwan and Japan are highly complementary in terms of their supply chain division of labor, he said.
“Taiwan is top in foundry and advanced packaging, and Japan leads in materials and equipment,” Chen said, citing Japan’s official numbers showing that it has 48 percent of the semiconductor material global market share and 31 percent of the equipment market share.
The two countries are also geographically and culturally close to each other, especially in terms of attitude toward work, he added.
On top of complementary dominant supply chain positions, Taiwan and Japan are on the side of democracy as “geopolitical changes have divided the world into two camps.”
In this democracy camp, more cooperation with the US, Europe, South Korea and Southeast Asia in forming a new supply chain is expected, he added.
Chen also said that customers in the US have urged his company to implement the “Taiwan plus one” strategy — manufacturing bases outside Taiwan.
In response, Chen said: “I believe Taiwan and Japan can take our cooperation to another level as we are natural partners in the industry.”
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS