Taiwanese firms should expand global deployment to advance market diversification and avoid punitive tariffs from Washington after US President Donald Trump took office on Monday, Deloitte & Touche Taiwan (勤業眾信) said yesterday.
Trump’s first term saw US imports from China shrink US$70 billion in 2020, while imports from Taiwan gained US$50.5 billion, as local firms benefited from US-China trade frictions, Deloitte Taiwan financial advisory head Maggie Pan (潘家涓) told a news conference in Taipei.
Supply chain realignment would carry on with a focus on localization, meaning that more global firms would set up production bases near their customers, Pan said.
Photo: Clare Cheng, Taipei Times
Non-technology and technology firms have noted the need and built ecological clusters in Southeast Asia, Mexico and the US, she said.
The semiconductor supply chain in the US could grow larger and more mature, facilitated by Washington’s funding and pressure, Pan said, citing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (台積電) massive investment in Arizona.
Japan poses another attractive investment destination, as the nation is seeking to groom its own semiconductor industry, and has provided funding and assistance, Pan said.
Deloitte Taiwan has identified Mexico, Canada, Thailand, Austria and Slovenia as the top five risk-prone investment destinations during Trump’s second term, while Vietnam looks increasingly unsafe given its growing trade surplus with the US.
That comes as some investments are aimed at illicit trans-shipment, or origin laundering, and are quite small in scale, as seen in Mexico, Pan said.
The latter practices have drawn Trump’s attention and prompted him to impose a 25 percent tariff on imports from neighboring Mexico and Canada.
China would remain the most favored investment destination for Taiwanese firms this year, followed by Vietnam and Thailand, a survey of business leaders released by PricewaterhouseCoopers Taiwan showed yesterday.
In the face of a new US administration, 50 percent of Taiwanese chief executives remain confident about the economy in the next 12 months, but 46 percent said that economic instability would the biggest challenge this year, the survey showed.
‘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