Taiwan was the US’ seventh-largest trading partner last year, moving up one spot from the previous year, with two-way trade increasing by more than 24 percent year-on-year, an Executive Yuan trade report showed.
Bilateral trade between Taiwan and the US reached US$158.6 billion last year, up 24.2 percent from 2023, the report said, citing data from the US Department of Commerce.
Taiwan-US trade accounted for 2.97 percent of total US trade, it said.
Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, EPA-EFE
US exports to Taiwan totaled US$42.336 billion last year, up 6 percent from a year earlier, while imports from Taiwan increased 32.5 percent to US$116.2 billion, it said.
As such, the US had a trade deficit of US$73.92 billion with Taiwan, an increase of 54.6 percent year-on-year — Washington’s sixth-largest deficit with a trading partner, the report said.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs has attributed the increase in Taiwan’s exports to the US to the effects of the trade war between Washington and Beijing, the government’s policy to encourage overseas Taiwanese businesses to invest in Taiwan, and artificial intelligence-driven demand for information and communications technology devices.
Meanwhile, a separate report from the ministry citing customs data said that automatic data processing equipment and components ranked first among Taiwan’s exports to the US last year, with an export value of US$51.494 billion, representing growth of 140.29 percent and accounting for 46.24 percent of total US-bound exports.
That was followed by integrated circuits (ICs), which had an export value of US$7.4 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 111.66 percent and making up 6.65 percent of total US-bound exports, the report said.
The US was Taiwan’s seventh-largest IC export market last year, it said.
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