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Comment by gervase | Hacker News Reader

In general, the US maintains unofficial diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which means that although the US does not officially recognize the government of Taiwan, it is subject to different tariffs than those imposed on China. Similarly, tariffs imposed by Taiwan are set by the ROC, not the PRC, and therefore are totally distinct from this trade war.

More information can be found in this position statement from the Department of State:

https://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35855.htm

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Interesting, so in that case, does Taiwan benefit from this ongoing trade war, or is the heightened tension and fear of political/military escalation nullifying any benefit that might be felt?

> Taiwan benefit from this ongoing trade war

Taiwan is hurt indirectly. Taiwan has invested heavily on the mainland China and manufactures there.

Many Chinese products exported to US have very low Chinese value added. Chinese manufacturer buys Taiwanese, Japanese or US made components, assembles them and sell them to the US.

For many high-tech products, Chinese value added may be just 20% of the price of the product. Chinese tariffs hit everyone in the value chain. Even the US.

For companies, those who have much bigger stakes in China are suffering (e.g., Foxconn). But there are also companies benefiting from the trade war since they don't incur the extra cost like their China-based competitors. The companies like TSMC are barely affected since they have a reasonably low percentage of yields in China. For labor/domestic businesses in general, they benefit from it like India and other SEA countries because the global supply chains are coming to diversify and they are attracting more manufacturing investment now.

>(e.g., Foxconn)

That is not strightly true because there isn't really an alternative to Foxconn in size and scale. But in other industry where there are lots of alternative around the world, the heat are quite intense.

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