Taiwan Helping Tech Firms That Choose Southeast Asia Over China
- Trump’s tariffs prompt manufacturers to diversify production
- Tech companies look to expand facilities in SE Asia, India
An employee inspect wafers using an optical microscope at a facility in Taichung, Taiwan, in 2016.
Photographer: Billy H.C. Kwok/Bloomberg
Taiwan, home base of many of the world’s top producers of electronics, is helping its companies to seek out new Asian manufacturing hubs outside China as skyrocketing U.S. tariffs threaten to splinter the global tech supply chain.
President Donald Trump’s decision to increase tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports last week will have convinced any undecided Taiwanese companies of the need to shift some production away from China, Kung Ming-hsin, Taiwan’s minister-without-portfolio in charge of economic affairs, said in an interview in Taipei Tuesday. After Taiwan, according to Kung, Vietnam and India are the next two preferred destinations for Taiwanese electronics companies.