Soaring demand for AI-related technology has fuelled Taiwan’s trade surplus with the United States – and put it in Trump’s crosshairs.

This is a perfect example of how unhinged their war on trade deficits really is.

Of course the US has a huge trade deficit with Taiwan. Everyone has a huge trade deficit with Taiwan, because they’re basically the only source of one of the most vital components in all of modern manufacturing.

You can’t solve that with tariffs. Reducing US reliance on Taiwanese semi-conductors requires long term investment in manufacturing. That’s what Biden was trying to do with CHIPS, and he actually made some real headway there. Getting Taiwan to agree to TSMC building a plant in the US was a huge get.

But just slapping tariffs on things just makes the semiconductors you import more expensive. Choosing not to import them isn’t an option. Importing them from somewhere else isn’t an option.

And on the flip side, you can’t increase Taiwanese imports from the US, because what the fuck are they going to import? What, you think they’re all going to start driving F-150s? Taiwan doesn’t give a fuck about most things the US makes, or if they do, they’re already buying it (like SaaS, which is a massive US export sector, but doesn’t get counted in Trump’s numbers because its not manufacturing so to his addled octogenarian brain it doesn’t exist). Taiwan’s population is barely more than a twentieth that of the US. They simply don’t have enough consumers to meaningfully import on the same scale that they export.

The fact that we’re all so dependent on a tiny country under constant threat of invasion for a vital resource is a huge problem, but this is not how you solve it.