ING’s Chief Economist for Better China, Lynn Tune, highlights that Taiwan’s March commerce knowledge far exceeded expectations, with exports and imports surging and the commerce surplus greater than doubling year-on-year within the first quarter of 2026. The report stresses Taiwan’s rising dependence on tech-related exports, rising export costs, and vital upside surprises which might be prompting an improve to 2026 GDP progress forecasts regardless of energy-related dangers.
Tech-led commerce growth reshapes progress outlook
“Regardless of the upside shock in import progress, the growth in exports far outweighed the sooner imports once we have a look at the commerce steadiness. Taiwan’s commerce steadiness rose to a five-month excessive of USD 21.3bn, whereas its 1Q26 commerce surplus rose to USD 53.0bn, which was up 124.2% YoY. This outperformance will possible translate to a different quarter of double-digit GDP progress when Taiwan experiences its 1Q26 GDP progress on the finish of April.”
“The continued outperformance has led to Taiwan’s commerce and financial system turning into more and more concentrated and depending on this phase; the subcategory represented 84.0% of whole exports in 1Q26, up from 80.4% in 2025 and 73.2% in 2024.”
“Nonetheless, it is inconceivable to disregard the commerce surplus as soon as once more, greater than doubling within the first quarter of 2026, particularly when contemplating the final time this occurred in 4Q25, web exports added a whopping 11.9ppt to GDP progress. Market forecasts proceed to undershoot precise progress even after waves of upgrades. We’re taking one other shot right here, upgrading our 1Q26 GDP forecast to 11.5% YoY from 10.2%, and our full-year GDP forecast to eight.2% YoY from 6.7%.”
“Whereas we expect that Taiwan’s financial progress will be capable to take up increased power costs so long as the worldwide tech growth and AI-related investments proceed, power shortages probably impacting manufacturing can be an entire completely different story. As such, our outlook is contingent on some kind of decision being reached in Iran within the coming weeks or months, or at the very least restricted provide disruption resulting in increased costs however not precise shortages.”
(This text was created with the assistance of an Synthetic Intelligence software and reviewed by an editor.)
