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The island’s many small factories have thrived by being frugal — and flexible. But President Trump’s unpredictability is testing their limits.
By Chris Buckley and Amy Chang Chien
Photographs by Lam Yik Fei
Chris Buckley and Amy Chang Chien spent two days interviewing export firms in Taichung, Taiwan.
April 12, 2025, 12:01 a.m. ET
Since President Trump announced his wave of globe-spanning tariffs, Alex Tang has held morning pep talks with the dozen or so workers at his lathe-making factory in central Taiwan, preparing them for rocky times ahead. His business, like all of Taiwan’s export-dependent manufacturers, could be hit hard.
Mr. Trump’s 90-day pause on most of the tariffs gave Taiwan, and much of the world, some breathing space. For now, Taiwan faces a 10 percent tariff on many of its products, not the 32 percent Mr. Trump had threatened. The fact that China, Taiwan’s enormous manufacturing rival and would-be ruler, has been hit with tariffs of 145 percent might look like an opportunity. But that could cause aftershocks of its own for Taiwan’s exporters.
Taiwan needs to be nimble to cope with the new era of disruption in global trade, including the possibility that Mr. Trump could raise tariffs again, Mr. Tang said. His business, Aegis CNC, does not export directly to the United States, but many customers for its precision manufacturing tools are factories in Taiwan and Southeast Asia that do so.
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“It’s the butterfly effect. It’s not as simple as saying that only those selling to the United States will be affected.”
Alex Tang, general manger of Aegis CNC in Taichung
“Some U.S. traders that buy from Taiwan have put on a hold, asked their suppliers to put orders on hold” while they try to figure out what might happen, Mr. Tang said in his workshop, a green corrugated shed surrounded by rice fields. “It’s a burden, this uncertainty because of Trump.”
During two days of interviews in central Taiwan, the island’s manufacturing heartland, other business owners echoed that sentiment: The tariffs are one cost, and the uncertainty is another. And they could face a deluge of competition from Chinese exporters, priced out of the U.S. market by tariffs and seeking customers elsewhere. Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, visited the central city of Taichung on Friday to discuss the tariffs’ effects with manufacturers.
