A 100% surcharge on fleas and semiconductors was announced by Donald Trump on Wednesday, August 6, in order to encourage foreign companies to relocate their production in the United States.
President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday August 6, that he planned to impose 100% customs duties on “fleas and semiconductors”, without specifying, for the moment, the date of entry into force of this new customs tax.
“We are going to put important customs duties on fleas and semiconductors,” he said from the White House, “around 100%. But this is good news for companies that make them in the United States”.
After this statement, Taiwan hastened to specify that the giant of the TSMC semiconductors was “exempt” from the customs duties announced by Donald Trump. Since he is “the main exporter of Taiwan, and has factories in the United States, TSMC is exempt,” said a Taiwanese official at an information meeting in Parliament on Wednesday. TSMC produces chips used in all technological areas, Apple iPhones for cutting -edge artificial intelligence equipment from Nvidia.
100 billion TSMC investment in the United States
Liu Chin-Ching, director of the National Development Council, nevertheless said that other manufacturers of Taiwanese fleas “will be affected” by the measure. “We will continue to observe the situation and propose short and medium term assistance measures,” he said.
It has been several months since the American president, who accuses Taiwan of sabotaging the American semiconductor industry, made this threat hover. To protect himself as the largest flea manufacturer in the world, TSMC announced in March Investing the colossal sum of $ 100 billion in the United States to build factories.
The concentration of the manufacturing of chips in Taiwan has long been defined under the concept of “silicon shield”, protecting it from an invasion or a blockade from China and inciting the United States to defend it against Beijing. This massive TSMC investment to avoid customs duties could harm the Taiwanese economy and weaken this “shield”.
For the time being, the exemption from customs duties obtained thanks to this investment allows Taiwan is perceived as good news. A sign of a relieved market, TSMC flew to midday almost 5% on the Taipei Stock Exchange. The stake is massive: Taiwan exported $ 7.4 billion from semiconductors to the United States in 2024.
Taiwan is also struck by temporary surcharge of 20% on its products, with the exception of semiconductors, pending the signing of an agreement between Taipei and Washington. The archipelago, which Beijing claims to be part of its territory, also undertook to increase to buy more American energy, and to bring its military spending to more than 3% of GDP in order to avoid new American customs duties.
Threatened Japanese SMEs
In Japan, on the other hand, the threats of Donald Trump have shaken Japanese technological values: Tokyo Electron, major equipment manufacturer for flea production, fell 2.73%. Semiconductor manufacturer Renesas plunged 3.44%.
Japanese SMEs in the sector “could vacillate at first (…) but many Japanese equipment is essential to most flea manufacturers who seek to increase their American production”, however tempers Andrew Jackson, analyst of Ortus Advisors, quoted by Bloomberg.
The United States could exempt “high-end chips and lithography machines”, but a 100% level “would give thanks to low-end flea producers, in Malaysia, for example, or Chinese cheap flea exporters”, he adds.
American policy could however have a paradoxical effect, warns Chiang Min-Yen, of the Research Institute for Democracy, Society, and Emerging Technology in Taiwan. Manufacturers of historic fleas that do not have the pockets as deep as TSMC to invest in the United States could see their production destabilized by these surcharges “at the risk of promoting Chinese unfair competition”, he fears.
In order to avoid suffering customs duties, several South Korean companies have followed the example of TSMC by investing in the United States. The South Korean Samsung Electronics, for example, has associated for example in Texas Instruments to build flea factories in the United States. A strategy for the time being paid, the company climbed 1.96% around 04:30 GMT, on the Taipei Stock Exchange.
