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In a really unexpected turn of events, US Imports from the island of Taiwan have just surpassed our imports from China. This is the first time that this has happened since at least the 1980s. According to the most recent monthly data that comes out of the Department of Commerce, In November of 2025, we imported roughly about the same amount of goods from both countries. However, By December of 2025, we imported $24.7 billion worth of goods from Taiwan and and only 21.1 billion from China. Now, the implications here are huge. I mean, Communist China's population is literally 58 times greater than Taiwan. Their manufacturing capacity is massive. All the contracts that China has been able to win over the last three decades is voluminous. They basically hold a monopoly on rare earth mineral processing. And yet here we are, little Taiwan, basically, I guess you can say the non communist version of China is able to outcompete the entire mainland. Now, the reason for this shift is twofold. It has to do with the tariffs as well as the position that Taiwan has built for itself through decades of hard work in the semiconductor industry. Now, on the subject of tariffs, despite both Taiwan and China getting hit with tariffs over the last year, it wasn't equal, quote. While Trump imposed 20% reciprocal tariffs on Taiwan last year, certain products, including semiconductors, benefited from exemptions. Washington and Taipei this month finalized a trade deal to lower the general US tariff on Taiwanese goods to 15%, bring billions of dollars in chip investments to the US and open Taiwan's auto and farm markets to American companies. On the flip side, the White House imposed heavier duties on Chinese goods in 2025. After numerous rounds of negotiations and a meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in late October, where they firmed up a truce. The US tariff rate on China was understood to be around 47%. And so that is tariffs. On the topic of chips, quote, in recent years, Taiwan has become a key trade partner with the United States, driven by demand for its semiconductor industry, which produces 90% of the world's advanced chips. And so, I mean, really, as a country, they could not have positioned themselves better for the boom in AI producing. 90% of the global supply of advanced chips is a pretty good position to find yourself in. However, it's worth mentioning that even though these numbers are basically just from the last month, this has been part of a growing trend, with imports from China on the decline and imports from Taiwan on the rise. Quote, on an annual basis, China still led Asian exports to the US sending over $308 billion worth of goods. Although this was down from over 438 billion in 2024. Taiwan shipped over 201 billion, up from about 116 billion in 2024. US trade balances with the two economies shifted dramatically in opposite directions. The annual deficit with China decreased sharply by $93.4 billion to nearly 202 billion. On the other hand, the deficit with Taiwan roughly doubled to nearly $147 billion. Okay, I do apologize about that. I realize that's a bit too many numbers to throw out all at once. Here's a graph from that very same article showing the data in a visual way. Basically, even though in terms of raw volume at the moment we still do more trade with China, the trend for our trade deficit is downward, falling by about one third over the last year. Conversely, though with Taiwan, even though the overall volume is less, our trade deficit has basically doubled since last year. And again, this is pretty wild when you consider that Communist China, mainland China's population is 58 times greater than Taiwan's. And actually, this really does expose a communist talking point because the ccp, the Chinese Communist Party, they have for decades now touted the economic miracle of China, taking all the credit for the GDP growth and the economic growth that the country has experienced. But another perspective to look at it is that the GDP and the economy of China, of mainland China, it grew in spite of the Communists rather than because of them. I mean, mainland China's economy, it was basically destroyed by the Communist Party. Basically, if you look at it historically, what the Communists did is that they implemented one brilliant centralized campaign after another. During the late 40s, early 50s, they killed somewhere between 1 and 3 million landowners in order to reshuffle the economy and get rid of the landlord class. Then in the late 50s, early 60s, they implemented the Great Leap Forward where they literally took farmers off of the fields and forced the farmers to create these makeshift seats, steel furnaces to smelt low grade steel. That steel for the most part was unusable and millions of people wound up starving to death because there literally was not enough food to feed the country. Then in the late 60s, early 70s, during the cultural Revolution, you had schools getting shut down for about 10 years and the students were encouraged to roam the streets and beat up, denounce, and sometimes even kill teachers, intellectuals, professionals, and even anyone who had glasses, indentations on their noses, because the thinking went that reading was a sign of being bourgeoisie. And it was only in the 80s when Under Deng Xiaoping, a few market opening policies were implemented in the country that China began to actually grow economically. And basically, I mean, it was really when the Communist Party took their boot off the necks of the people that the economy was able to grow and the people were able to somewhat flourish. But again, looking at it historically, that was all in spite of the Communists rather than because of them. And the existence of Taiwan basically puts that fact into stark relief. If you think about it as a scientific experiment, Taiwan is like the placebo group to the Communist experiment. In 1949, mainland China was taken over by the Communists, while the island of Taiwan was taken over by the Nationalists. Ethnically, they are literally the exact same people. Same history, same genetics, same same language, same culture, same ethnic heritage, same Confucius values. But one was Communist and one wasn't. Then you fast forward 80 years and by 2026, even without the tariffs, the GDP per capita of mainland China is around $13,000. In Taiwan, however, it's $44,000. This means that if you can extrapolate it, if China was never enslaved by the Communists, its economy as large as it already is, but might be at least three and a half times greater than it is today. It's like a real world example of the retarding effect of communism on a society. However, I will of course mention that that's just one analysis. There are obviously many different factors at play. So let me know your thoughts. Do you agree with this analysis or do you think I missed something? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below. All right, just to pause here for a super quick moment, I'd like to introduce today's sponsor, Shenyuan Performing Arts. It is the preeminent D best Chinese classical dance performance in the world. But funny enough, they're actually based right here in the US and they're not allowed to perform in China. Part of the show, it exposes the crimes of the Chinese Communist Party. And so ironically, they can't even go there. But the show itself is great. I've personally seen it several times, and the athleticism, the artistry, the stories are phenomenal. Some of them are touching, some are funny. A lot of them are thought provoking and. And you're not really allowed to film the show, but basically it looked exactly like the commercials do. Beautiful colors, a full orchestra right there in the theater. They also have the screen in the back that's perfectly timed with the dancers. So sometimes it looks like they're jumping in and out of the screen to tell the story, which is cool. But the best part is that it's just super uplifting in a moral sense. I Feel like every time I watch it, I leave the theater as a better person than I did coming in. And most shows nowadays, at least in my opinion, are really subversive and they sneak in some communist elements. But Shen Yun is different. They really showcase traditional culture and even though it's Chinese, it actually probably resonates with everyone. So check it out. They have shows coming up in like a hundred different cities. Dallas, Houston, New York, Memphis, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Seattle, pretty much everywhere else in between. And the best part is that to our viewers, they're offering a special promotional deal. Just buy your tickets over on the Shenyon website and use promo code Roman26 to avoid paying both the ticketing fee as well as the facility fee. That's again, promo code R o M A N26. I'll throw a link to the website where you can find all the different show dates and cities. It'll be down in the description box below. And so now circling back to the topic at hand. The thing that makes Taiwan so powerful in terms of exports, the fact that they control almost the entire semiconductor industry globally, is actually the thing that makes the semiconductor market and most everything that we take for granted in this modern world so fragile to that point. Here is U.S. treasury Secretary speaking at Davos just earlier this year.
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Conductors, I would say that the single biggest threat to the world economy, the single biggest point of single failure, is that 97% of the high end chips are made in Taiwan. If that island were blockaded, that capacity were destroyed, it would be an economic apocalypse.
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An economic apocalypse sounds pretty bad. The silver lining though is that tsmc, which is the Taiwan semiconductor company, they recently opened up a fairly large plant over in the state of Arizona as a bit of a, I guess you can say, contingency plan. And so there you have it. If you want to parse through the latest trade data, the one that I showed you at the very top of the episode regarding the sort of newfound disparity between Taiwan and China. I'll throw the links to that down in the description box below, which I should mention is that description box right below those like and subscribe buttons, both of which I hope you take a quick moment to smash so that this video can be picked up by the YouTube algorithm and shared out to ever more people. Thank you so much for that. And I will of course also mention by smashing that subscribe button, you will get updates on your timeline every time we publish a new episode. So I do hope you smash that button as well. That way we can stay in touch this isn't just a one time episode viewing session. You can get more episodes as we publish them. And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times. Stay informed. Stay informed. Most importantly, stay free.