Analysis: AI Boom Is Reshaping Taiwan's Trade Performance

TaiwanPlus News

Taiwan’s exports hit a record monthly high in November, surpassing US$64 billion, and are on track to top US$600 billion for the year. These record exports are driven mainly by booming global demand for IT and AI-related products, especially servers for data centers. But the surge is uneven — traditional industries lag, creating a widening K-shaped economy and potential social inequality. TaiwanPlus spoke with Lee Torng-her, economics professor at National Dong Hwa University, to examine the forces reshaping Taiwan’s trade profile.

Transcript

00:00Could you briefly walk us through the key reasons behind Taiwan's strong export performance this

00:04year despite Trump's tariffs and how sustainable the trend is?

00:08That would be the information technology product. So more and more high-tech companies are building

00:17the data center which has a huge demand for you know servers and those kind of things. This

00:26depends on the uh of course right now they call it bubble okay so it depends on how long the bubble

00:33can won't be kind of like a burst so maybe the bubble won't burst so nobody knows. Taiwan's overall

00:41export looks strong thanks to tech demand but traditional sectors remain weak. What risks does

00:47this imbalance pose? I think Taiwan right now you could see uh this is a sort of we are going into

00:54this train for it's a what we call this a k-shaped economy so but for rest of them they could not

01:02feel the uh you know high speed growth in the GDP. So I guess uh this maybe in the future the imminent

01:11risk maybe will be cause the uh income you know imparity growing bigger and bigger you know and

01:21maybe will cause uh some sort of uh social problem. In your opinion what will Taiwan's trade performance

01:28look like in 2026? One is it depends on U.S. uh AI bubble uh but not only this bubble because uh

01:36U.S. uh asked Taiwan's uh manufacturer especially in high-tech uh manufacturer actually to move their

01:45production facility to United States. So once most of these uh newly established facilities in United

01:54States you know being online and which means what U.S. uh do not need to import more you know those uh

02:04high-tech products uh from Taiwan uh second factors uh probably would you know where depends on the uh China's uh

02:12you know uh future in this uh foreign trade. If you look at the government um the Taiwan government's uh

02:20newly released uh statistic you know uh the IT product export to China also increased a lot of course

02:26not that much like uh to to United States but it's still uh significantly increased.

02:34Okay

02:41okay

02:43okay

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