Taiwan president discusses US tariff response with tech execs

TAIPEI: Taiwan President Lai Ching-te met tech executives on Saturday to discuss how to respond to new U.S. tariffs, promising to ensure Taiwan’s global competitiveness and safeguard the island’s interests.

President Donald Trump announced across-the-board import tariffs on Wednesday with much higher duties for dozens of trading partners, including Taiwan, which runs a large trade surplus with the United States and is facing a 32% duty on its products.

The U.S. tariffs, however, do not apply to semiconductors, a major Taiwanese export.

Lai met the executives at his official residence to discuss the response to “the global economic and trade challenges brought about by the reciprocal tariff policy”, his spokesperson Karen Kuo said in a statement.

She did not say which companies were present, only that there were several representatives from the information and communications technology, or ICT, industry.

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Lai “hopes to give industry the greatest support, stabilize the economic situation, ensure Taiwan’s industry’s global competitiveness, and safeguard our country’s national interests and the continued steady progress of our economy”, Kuo said.

Taiwan is home to TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker and an important supplier to companies including Apple and Nvidia.

TSMC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it attended the meeting. TSMC is in its quiet period ahead of first quarter earnings announcement on April 17.

On Friday, Taiwan’s government unveiled T$88 billion ($2.67 billion) in financial help for companies and industries to deal with the impact of the U.S. tariffs.

Taiwan, which says the tariffs are unreasonable, has said it will discuss them with the United States and has not announced any retaliatory tariffs.