On June 29 (Sunday), the Taiwan Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade and Economics issued a press release announcing that the second round of trade negotiations between Taiwan and the United States had made “constructive progress.”
The negotiations were led by Vice Premier of the Executive Yuan, Audrey Tang, and the Chief Negotiator of the Office of Trade Negotiations, Jane Yang, who led a delegation to Washington on June 25 to engage in substantive discussions on reciprocal tariff issues with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
According to the Office of Trade and Economics, between the first round of negotiations in May and the recent discussions, both sides engaged in multiple video conferences for issue discussions and in-depth communications, as well as exchanged opinions through document exchanges, continuing to advance the negotiations.
Regarding the physical negotiations in Washington, the Office of Trade and Economics mentioned that both Taiwan and the U.S. acknowledged the ongoing positive development of the negotiations, laying a solid foundation for deepening the economic and trade partnership.
During the negotiations, Taiwan and the U.S. gradually reached consensus on various economic and trade issues such as tariffs, non-tariff trade barriers, trade facilitation, and supply chain resilience. This aims to promote trade balance, optimize the economic and trade system, and create more opportunities for industrial and economic development between Taiwan and the U.S.
The Trump administration imposed a 32% tariff on imports from Taiwan on April 2, followed by a 90-day suspension of tariff collection.
On May 1, Taiwan’s trade negotiator Jane Yang met with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer for the first round of Taiwan-U.S. negotiations in Jeju Island, South Korea.
Before the Trump administration announced the tariff hikes, Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), pledged an additional $100 billion investment in the United States.
TSMC is one of the world’s leading semiconductor chip manufacturers based in Taiwan, ranking among the top ten global companies. Its core business includes chip manufacturing, packaging, testing, and technical services, serving as a major supplier of high-performance chips for companies like Apple, MediaTek, Google, NVIDIA, AMD, and OpenAI.
TSMC plans to build six advanced wafer plants, two packaging plants, and a research and development center in Arizona, USA, with a total investment of up to $165 billion, expected to create thousands of job opportunities.