Taiwan's trade surplus with the United States and ASEAN surges, with South Korea and Japan becoming the largest sources of deficit

Source: Central Bank Research Report

[Reporter Gao Jiahe/Reporting from Taipei] As high-end products are produced in Taiwan and sold directly to the United States, and ASEAN has become an assembly base for mid- and low-end products, which drives Taiwan’s electronic component exports, Taiwan’s trade surplus (surplus) with the United States and ASEAN has experienced explosive growth. In the context of the extremely precise division of labor in the global AI industry chain, Taiwan's demand for upstream core memory and semiconductor materials and equipment has increased sharply. South Korea and Japan have become Taiwan's top two trade import (deficit) source countries.

Benefiting from the wave of generative AI, Taiwan's overall merchandise trade exceeded US$136.91 billion from January to August 2026, an annual increase of 57.6%, a record high for the same period in previous years.

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Among them, trade exports to the United States reached US$140.74 billion (the scale even exceeded Taiwan's total exports to the world), with an annual increase of US$55.4 billion; the main export increase came from information and audio-visual products such as graphics cards and AI servers, which accounted for nearly 90% of the exports to the US.

In addition, from January to August this year, trade with ASEAN exceeded US$44.66 billion, a new high for the same period. The "China + 1" base of Taiwanese businessmen has extremely strong demand for Taiwan's electronic components (accounting for 79.4% of exports to ASEAN) and telecommunications products.

As for South Korea, it has become the largest foreign importer. From January to August this year, Taiwan’s imports from South Korea increased to US$42.21 billion. The main reason is that AI high-bandwidth memory (HBM) is in short supply and prices have risen sharply. Memory accounts for 95.5% of Taiwan's imports from South Korea.

Japan is the second largest importer of foreign goods. From January to August this year, its imports to Japan exceeded US$19.51 billion, mainly importing precision machinery (35.6%), chemicals (22.1%) and key materials for semiconductor production.

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