The major U.S. indexes were reeling on Tuesday following U.S. President Donald Trump saying he’s in no mad rush to make a trade deal with China, which caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to fall over 400 points before settling for a 280-point loss at the close. Businesses in Taiwan were wary of both nations making a trade deal anytime soon.
Markets were lifted in October after both nations purportedly agreed to a “phase one” deal, but since then, a tangible deal has yet to materialize. Meanwhile, U.S. equities have may already been pricing in optimism that a deal would be done by December.
Businesses in Taiwan had the prescience to know that a deal could not happen anytime soon.
“Every company contact in Taiwan was definitely skeptical of a US-China trade deal, with the majority believing that trade tensions between the US and China will persist for years,” said Evercore ISI analyst Jaewoo Nakajima. “From Taiwanese companies’ viewpoint, even if there’s a rollback of tariffs, differences are irreconcilable between the US and China on fundamental economic issues such as intellectual property protection, Chinese govt subsidies to Chinese manufacturers, and discriminatory market access for foreign enterprises.”
