Howdy everybody! That is Lauly, sending greetings from Taipei.
Normally, folks in Taiwan take pleasure in a four-day vacation at first of April — Youngsters’s Day and Tomb-Sweeping Day (a little bit of an odd mixture, I do know). However this yr was completely different, at the very least for folks concerned within the tech and media industries, because of Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs. An trade pal jokingly mentioned that the US president had turned the vacation into an actual “tomb-sweeping day”.
Personally, the primary two weeks after Trump’s announcement have been a nightmare as I chased sources throughout the availability chain for his or her reactions, tried to understand myself what was occurring, and on high of that took care of my son, who was sick your entire time.
I used to be significantly surprised once I discovered {that a} scoop my colleague and I had drafted the night time earlier than had develop into practically ineffective the following morning after Trump all of the sudden mentioned that each nation besides China would have a 90-day grace interval on the brand new tariffs. We needed to begin over, going again to sources and remodeling the story. I shared my emotions with a longtime trade pal and he mentioned, “Now you understand how now we have felt on a regular basis since April 2.”
Nearly everybody I’ve met not too long ago has had large darkish circles underneath their eyes. Paul Peng, chair of main Taiwanese show maker AUO, mentioned: “Individuals requested what we should always do. I’ve solely two items of recommendation: Eat effectively and sleep effectively.” I feel such a relaxed mindset is what I wanted, too.
After working feverishly for 3 weeks, together with weekends, I left every thing behind and made a spontaneous brief journey with my household to Solar Moon Lake within the central Taiwanese metropolis of Nantou final week. It was one of the best resolution I made not too long ago. The climate was good and the turquoise lake, stretching out in direction of misty, forested mountains, radiated tranquility. Solar Moon Lake all the time has a magic capacity to instantly chill out your muscle groups, make your breath deeper and calm your thoughts. When you ever come to Taiwan, I extremely advocate a visit to Solar Moon Lake.
The brief journey — which included a beautiful night-time firefly tour that my son completely liked — helped recharge my power and reset my exhausted mind. The tariff conflict was simply as chaotic once I returned to work this week, however I really feel I’ve extra capability to deal with the uncertainties.
And nothing lasts ceaselessly, in any case. A senior govt with an Apple provider who has been within the trade for greater than 40 years instructed me he thinks the tariff conflict will de-escalate in two or three months after which the availability chain ought to have a clearer image of what to do subsequent. “And let’s see,” he added, “whether or not the tariff conflict will ‘Make America Nice Once more’ or ‘Make America Nice Alone.’”
In different information, #techAsia will likely be taking a break subsequent week as a result of Golden Week vacation in Japan. We will likely be again to our common schedule on Might 15. See you then!
Reverse consequence
What was the primary response by Apple when the Trump administration escalated tariffs on Chinese language imports to as excessive as 145 per cent? As a substitute of dashing to deliver manufacturing house, it doubled down on south-east Asia and India. The Cupertino-based tech big’s speedy technique to cope with the tariff conflict exhibits simply how far off a “Made in America” iPhone stays, even when Trump and his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, insist in any other case, write Nikkei Asia’s Lauly Li and Cheng Ting-Fang.
Apple helped suppliers to purchase tools to spice up manufacturing, instructed suppliers that almost all of US-bound iPhones, MacBooks and iPads should be made in India and Vietnam, and rushed extra part manufacturing to Thailand, as Nikkei Asia first reported in mid-April.
Nonetheless, the fact is that even south-east Asia and India — the place Apple and different electronics makers have been pushing arduous to diversify manufacturing for years — nonetheless wrestle to compete towards China and its ultra-efficient provide chain, by no means thoughts shifting such manufacturing to the US
Shifting a whole provide chain is extraordinarily difficult. As an example, whereas some MacBooks, Mac Mini and iMacs at the moment are labelled “Made in Vietnam” or “Made in Thailand”, not the entire parts have been produced or the entire meeting carried on the market as a consequence of lack of adequate technicians, expert employees, whereas some low-margin parts usually are not but possible to be moved out of China.
Cluster impact
Chinese language tech big Huawei is making strides within the synthetic intelligence chip market, having began deliveries of its superior AI “cluster” to home shoppers, writes the Monetary Instances’ Zijing Wu.
The transfer comes as Chinese language corporations face growing limitations on accessing Nvidia’s high-end semiconductors due to tightening US export controls.
Sources point out that Huawei has already bought over 10 units of its CloudMatrix 384, a system that interconnects a considerable variety of AI chips. These preliminary deliveries are destined for information centres serving varied Chinese language tech corporations.
Business analysts have been impressed by Huawei’s fast growth and deployment of CloudMatrix.
“The event of Huawei’s CloudMatrix 384 means China now has an AI system able to beating Nvidia’s,” mentioned Dylan Patel, founding father of chip consultancy SemiAnalysis.
Huawei has instructed shoppers its CloudMatrix performs considerably higher than Nvidia’s common NVL72 cluster by way of computing energy and reminiscence, in line with an organization presentation reviewed by the Monetary Instances and other people with data of the matter.
CloudMatrix 384 does have a number of disadvantages, together with increased power consumption and extra demanding software program upkeep. However given China’s considerable energy sources and engineering expertise, it nonetheless represents a compelling different for shoppers now restricted from Nvidia’s most superior know-how, mentioned folks with data of the gross sales.
AI optimism
Unimicron, Taiwan’s main provider of chip substrate and printed circuit boards, expects sturdy demand from high-end AI information centres to drive increased progress — if the tariff conflict between the US and China doesn’t escalate additional, Nikkei Asia’s Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li write.
“To date, we don’t see any clients adjusting their orders as a result of tariffs, however general we do have considerations that increased tariffs or escalating geopolitical tensions may hit international demand and ultimately, immediately or not directly, impression orders,” firm chair TJ Tseng mentioned.
Unimicron, which counts Nvidia, Intel and Apple amongst its clients, is at the moment constructing its first manufacturing facility in Thailand, with plans for it to enter manufacturing within the second half of this yr.
Tseng mentioned his firm has been contemplating investing within the US in response to current geopolitical developments, however has no concrete plans to take action in the mean time given the dearth of a provide chain and buyer demand to assist such a transfer.
Alibaba’s DeepSeek riposte
The AI mannequin race in China is getting hotter and warmer. E-commerce big Alibaba launched Qwen3, the newest era of its open-source giant language mannequin household, in a bid to problem DeepSeek in synthetic intelligence capabilities and effectivity, writes Nikkei Asia’s Cissy Zhou.
Alibaba mentioned Qwen3 sharply reduces computing energy in contrast with its friends and that its flagship Qwen3-235B-A22B outperforms quite a lot of fashions launched by main rivals — specifically DeepSeek-R1, OpenAI-o1, Grok-3 and Gemini-2.5-Professional — in a variety of benchmark checks. These embody mathematical reasoning, coding proficiency, and power and performance calling capabilities, a measure of a mannequin’s capacity to pick out and use one of the best exterior instruments for a process.
The extremely anticipated launch, which native media says took round seven months of labor, comes as competitors heats up amongst Chinese language AI corporations, significantly because the emergence of DeepSeek early this yr. Final week, Baidu launched two new AI basis fashions that it claims value “a fraction” of comparable choices from DeepSeek.
Urged reads
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Japan’s Sakana AI sees alternative with US uncertainty (Nikkei Asia)
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Baidu founder highlights ‘shrinking’ demand for DeepSeek’s text-based AI (FT)
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Toyota picks Huawei, Honda makes use of DeepSeek for China EVs (Nikkei Asia)
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Samsung warns US tariffs will dent reminiscence chip and smartphone gross sales (FT)
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Amazon pressures suppliers to chop costs to restrict Trump tariff shock (FT)
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Japan’s decrease home passes AI invoice as nation targets Western funding (Nikkei Asia)
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Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan hints at foundry collaboration with TSMC (Nikkei Asia)
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China and South Korea lengthen battery battle from EVs to grid storage (FT)
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TikTok to enter Japan e-commerce because it seeks growth exterior US (Nikkei Asia)
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Apple goals to supply all US iPhones from India in pivot away from China (FT)
