By Ben Blanchard
TAIPEI, Sept 1 (Reuters) – Taiwan’s semiconductor prowess is built on the foundations of democracy and rule of law, becoming a trusted international partner that keeps its promises to supply the world, President Lai Ching-te said on Tuesday.
Taiwan is home to TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker and main producer of the advanced chips powering the AI trend.
Amid tensions between China and the U.S. and Europe over trade and technology, Taiwan has sought to promote itself as a reliable, democratically governed semiconductor manufacturer.
Speaking at the SEMICON trade show in Taipei, which this year is being attended by senior executives from companies including Microsoft and Alphabet Inc’s Google, Lai said AI computing power requires chips and global collaboration.
“Over the decades, Taiwan has built a complete semiconductor cluster, possessing fast, flexible, and highly efficient manufacturing capabilities, and on the foundation of democracy and the rule of law, has stably supplied the global market and kept its promises,” he added.
Taiwan has faced pressure from the U.S., its most important international backer and arms supplier, to reduce the heavy global concentration of chipmaking on the island, and TSMC is investing $265 billion to build factories in Arizona.
U.S. President Donald Trump has on occasion criticised Taiwan for “stealing” American semiconductor business, a perception Taiwan’s government says is unfair even as it has backed its companies to increase their U.S. investments.
U.S., EU SEEK INVESTMENT
Speaking in a pre-recorded video message to SEMICON played shortly before Lai spoke, Jacob Helberg, U.S. under secretary of state for economic affairs, said semiconductors will shape who leads in AI, how defence capabilities will evolve, and “who sets the terms of the global economy for the next generation”.
“Now, Taiwan is investing in the United States, joining us in building up our manufacturing base because the world has learned, sometimes the hard way, that concentration without resilience is a vulnerability,” he added.
Lai said that Taiwan will work with countries around the world on chips in the face of natural disasters, pandemics or “geopolitical shifts” to diversify risk.
While the majority of Taiwan’s overseas tech and chip investment in recent years has been in the U.S., the European Union has also been keen to catch up, led by TSMC’s €3.5 billion ($4.06 billion) investment in Germany for the company’s first factory in Europe.
Lai, speaking for a second time at SEMICON later in the day to an EU investment forum, said Taiwan looked forward to more tech cooperation but Europe needed to do its part too.
“We hope the European nations will promote agreements on double taxation and investment with Taiwan. This will help unlock our immense potential for investment and industrial cooperation,” he said.
($1 = 0.8620 euros)
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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