Taiwan spent this week’s SEMICON trade show in Taipei making the same argument twice over, once to Washington and once to Brussels: that its chips arrive with democratic governance attached.
The commercial half of that argument came with a number, and economy minister Kung Ming-hsin supplied it, announcing a further $20bn of planned Taiwanese investment in the United States, Reuters reported from the show.
That pledge sits on top of the trade agreement Taipei signed with Washington earlier this year, which cut the reciprocal tariff on Taiwanese goods to 15% in return for at least $250bn of Taiwanese investment in American semiconductor production.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has since kept the pressure on, warning that semiconductor tariffs will fall on companies that do not build on US soil.
Alongside the credit guarantee behind the $250bn, Taipei committed to buying $44.4bn of American liquefied natural gas and crude oil, $15.2bn of aircraft and engines, and $25.2bn of power-generation equipment, the last of which is a reminder that fabs are, among other things, enormous consumers of electricity.
