US President Donald Trump said that he would charge 300% of chip import taxes, but analysts believe that Taiwan Electric and its customers who have already gone to the U.S. factory should not be too worried.
Reuters, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch and other foreign news reports, Trump flew to Alaska last Friday (August 15) to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Air Force One told reporters that he would start levying taxes on steel, chips and semiconductor classes in a few weeks.
Trump had previously hinted that he was preparing to set chip taxes at around 100%. He proposed a more uplifting figure on Friday, calling it "the tax rate may come to 200% or 300%", and said that the chip tax rate at the beginning would be lower, giving operators the opportunity to come to American factories, but the tax rate would rise very high after a period of time.
Trump also said he believes companies will choose to come to the U.S. factory rather than bear high taxes.
Semiconductor stocks weakened on the 15th, but some were affected by the lack of good impact on Applied Materials' earnings outlook this quarter due to uncertainty in the Chinese market. The crystalline foundry Longtou TEK ADR, memory manufacturers Micron Technology, Inc., NVIDIA (Nvidia Corp.), and Ultramicro (AMD) fell by 0.88%, 3.53%, 0.86% and 1.90% respectively.
Yingcai stock price fell 14.07% on the 15th and closed at US$161.76, reaching a new low since June 3, with a decline of 30 constituent stocks in the Philadelphia semiconductor index.
Wolfe Research analyst Chris Caso previously pointed out that Taiwan Electric has invested in factories in the United States and should be able to exempt the chip taxes prepared for the United States after the end of the "Term 232" investigation. This also means that chips commissioned by technology giants such as NVIDIA (Nvidia Corp.), Super Micro to Taitung Motor Co., Ltd. can also avoid taxes.
Extended reading: Tax-free conditions for overseas imports of US chips? Lutnik: Committed to build a factory