TAIPEI (Reuters) – Executive director of top -notch company in Taiwanese lace design mediak said on Friday that the company runs simulation for possible US tariffs on the island, but thinks it will be “manageable” for this year.
Technical companies in Taiwan, the home of the world’s largest TSMC contract manufacturer, are facing the possibility that US President Donald Trump will follow threats to put tariffs on imported chips, complaining about the campaign that Taiwan stole the American job of the semiconductor.
Trump said last week that he plans to impose tariffs on imported chips, along with medicines and steel, in an effort to make manufacturers to make them in the United States. Did not give a time frame.
Asked in a three -month conference call on the profit on the impact on the company, whose partners and clients include artificial intelligence (AI) Darling Nvidia, from any future US tariff on Taiwan, Mediatek’s CEO Rick Tsai said that “very unpredictable.”
“Of course not only sitting here without doing anything. We make our own assumptions, doing some simulations,” he said, without giving details.
For this year, Tsai said that the impact would be “manageable”.
“You can define controlling in many different ways, but from my end I think it is for us for 2025,” he added. “There are so many variables, so it is very difficult to give an accurate assessment now. It’s very complex.”
The technological industry also faces the unpredictability of Deepseek AI Chinese startups.
Technical shares around the world sank on January 27 after the start of Deepseek AI – obviously cost a fraction of rival models and demanded less sophisticated chips – asked questions about West’s huge investments in the manufacturers of chips and data centers.
But Tsai said he remained very positive on the AI market.
“With a recent Deepseek phenomenon, we are actually becoming more optimistic,” he said. “Trend is AI democratization. It will expand more to average users.”
MediaTeck shares have increased 7.8% so far, exceeding 1.9% of a profit of 1.9% of the wider market. The company’s shares closed on Friday.
(Ben Blanchard reporting; Kim Coghill Mounting)
