Taiwan ranked as 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.
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Taiwan-US trade accounted for 2.97 percent of total US trade, it said.
The report also showed that US exports to Taiwan totaled US$42.336 billion, up 6 percent from a year earlier, while imports from Taiwan increased 32.5 percent to US$116.2 billion.
As such, the US had a trade deficit of US$73.92 billion with Taiwan, an increase of 54.6 percent year-on-year and 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 Taiwan customs data said that last year, automatic data processing equipment/components and integrated circuits (ICs) ranked as the top two export products to the US.
Automatic data processing equipment/components ranked first among Taiwan's exports to the US, 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, the report showed.
ICs followed, with an export value of about 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 added.
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