Trump’s Taiwan Tariff Shock

In the worst Chinese New Year present ever, Trump announced proposed Taiwan Tariffs of up to 100%! What will happen next?

Photo: Reuters

First of all I have a bone to pick with the techbros and the “tpot” accounts who somehow hypnotized themselves into thinking they get to control Trump like an elderly orange meat puppet in the run up to last year’s presidential election. I’ve read so many tweets that were like “I’m 99% sure JD Vance reads my tweets” or “We’re looking at 12 years of greatness for America!” Meaning 4 of Trump and 8 of Vance.

Well boys, was 100% tariffs on the world’s best chips a part of your plan? Because this is exactly what Trump threatened today in a speech in Miami:

“And we don’t want to give them billions of dollars like this ridiculous program that Biden has given everybody billions of dollars. They already have billions of dollars,” Trump said. “They’ve got nothing but money Joe. They didn’t need money. They needed an incentive. And the incentive is gonna be they’re not gonna wanna pay a 25, 50 or even a 100 % tax.”

The self-defeating nature of this move is making everybody who understand economics wanna tug their hair out, meanwhile, Chinese accounts online are having a great time commending “Comrade Trump” for “making China great again”. Indeed, this proposed tariff — which I have no reason to doubt would go through in some form — is a double-insult. Firstly, it is a slap in the face to Taiwan, who has been a stalwart ally and went as far as agreeing to build chip plants in Arizona against all economic logic to assuage the US’ geopolitical concerns. It is also hurts anyone who buy the chips as there is no alternate source for Taiwan’s high-quality semiconductors and producers are likely to be able to pass on the bulk of the tariffs to their customers. Customers like Nvidia, already hurting after Chinese AI sensation DeepSeek demonstrated that the number of their GPU’s needed to train a world-class AI is nowhere near what the conventional wisdom previously thought.

This is the day before Chinese New Year in Taiwan and people are home with their families so the timing of this announcement feels both horribly inauspicious but also maybe with a silver lining: The Taiwan Stock Exchange will remain closed through the end of the week for Chinese New Year. I can only hope there is some clarity if not sanity coming from the US administration by that time.

Meanwhile, the netizens have been scathing online towards Trump’s move. In a typical comment posted under a news article gives the flavor of what I’ve been seeing online all day:

OP: “What a shameless hooligan of a country!”

Reply 1: “And yet Taiwan accepts”

Reply 2: “Trump is more of a m*********** than Xi Jinping.”

This was taken from the comment section of the China Times, admittedly a “pan-blue” publication. But the comments under the pan-green Liberty Times were really in a similar vein, there were just a lot fewer of them. PTT netizens were even more scathing: “Then we’ll sell to China, let the US fall off.” “Are the citizens of the United States ready for more inflation?” “If you don’t like it go tell Intel to make the chips for you. Oh, I forgot. They can’t!”

This is the thing: A lot of Taiwanese people invests in stocks. And while it is true that a lot of the tariffs probably can be passed through to the customers, this news is undoubtedly going to be a blow to the stock market. When you mess with people’s money, they are gonna get mad. Especially when it’s blatantly obvious that Trump’s game is to get Taiwan to build even more chip plants in the United States — without subsidies this time. There is no way this is going to fly.

The official reaction from the Presidential Office spokesperson Karen Kuo was incredibly bland: “Taiwan have worked with the US on semiconductors for a long time. Our relationship is close and focused on creating win-wins. In the future, we will pay attention to US policy and keep our communications and cooperations close and face global challenges together, and…” Blah, blah, blah.

C’mon girl. I understand it’s the holidays and it’s a lot of pressure to come up with a response on the spot. But this response sounds weak.

I truly hope that the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will not be bullied by Trump into forcing TSMC into building more plants in the United States. It’s commercially ruinous and frankly exploitative. In fact, isn’t this a wake-up call for Taiwan that being the best little ally that we can possibly be to the United States will not get us the results we desire. It’s time for Taiwan to think independently. If the United States is going to go America First, we need to think about what it means to put Taiwan first.