Taiwan, the center of the global supply chain for computer chips, woke up on Thursday to the news that President Trump had put new 32 percent tariffs on the island’s exports to the United States, except for semiconductors.
Taiwanese companies have spent decades and billions of dollars building up a network of factories that conduct the complex process of etching tiny circuits onto pieces of silicon.
These chips, and a broad range of electronic devices that contain them, are Taiwan’s main exports and are increasingly the focal point of the Taiwan-US geopolitical relationship, which has undergone a markedly transactional shift since Mr. Trump took office.
Mr. Trump has previously said that Taiwan had gained an unfair dominance in making semiconductors and threatened to impose tariffs on the sector.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest chipmaker, said it would spend $100 billion in the United States to expand its operations in Arizona.
On Wednesday, in announcing the tariffs on Taiwan, Mr. Trump praised TSMC for investing in the United States.
Semiconductors are a complicated target for tariffs because the supply chain for making them is both global and extremely specialized.
The Taiwanese government on Thursday condemned the tariffs as unreasonable and unfair to Taiwan, saying Taiwan’s exports to the United States have increased in recent years due to increased demand for Taiwanese electronics and advanced technology.
The Taiwanese government “thought too optimistically about the relationship with Trump,” said Jason Hsu, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and former member of Taiwan’s legislature for the opposition Nationalist Party.
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