US imports from Taiwan now exceed imports from China for the first time in decades — AI gold rush fuels 93.5% jump in advanced system exports

Tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, and fear of additional tariffs, have forced businesses to change their supply chain drastically in the last one and a half years. As a result, for the first time in decades, the United States imported more goods from Taiwan than from China in late 2025, according to DigiTimes. A graph published by @JosephPontiano accentuates the point, as data from Taiwan’s International Trade Administration indicates that exports from Taiwan to the U.S. roughly doubled in certain categories, including AI servers that cost hundreds of millions of dollars per unit.

Taiwan ahead of China

U.S. Commerce Department figures released on February 19 show that U.S. imports from China declined by nearly 44% year-over-year, or by $21.1 billion in December 2025. Over the same period, imports from Taiwan more than doubled, reaching $24.7 billion. Even though Chinese exporters have tried to offset tariff pressure by transferring their production capacity to other countries, or shipping goods through third countries, direct trade between the two largest economies has contracted sharply since Donald Trump re-assumed office in early 2025.

As far as an annualized basis is concerned, the chart illustrates a steep drop in Chinese shipments to the U.S. throughout 2025, while Taiwanese imports to the U.S. accelerated, eventually overtaking China by late in the year. Perhaps the big question now is whether exports from China to the U.S. have bottomed out, and whether there is space for exports from Taiwan to grow.

The surge of imports from Taiwan to the U.S. have a very specific reason: Taiwanese companies like Foxconn, Quanta, and Wistron produce the lion’s share of AI servers, each of which pack eight AI accelerators (such as Nvidia’s B200 or B300) that cost around $50,000 per unit, as well as rack-scale AI systems like Nvidia’s NVL72 GB200/GB300 that are powered by 72 AI GPUs. As the U.S. is building out its AI infrastructure, companies like AWS, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are inevitably increasing their imports from Taiwan, which reshapes the country’s trade profile.

One thing to keep in mind here is that Foxconn, Quanta, and Wistron are expanding their production capacity in the U.S. and Mexico to serve North American markets. It remains to be seen what happens to Taiwan's exports to the U.S. once these production facilities are complete. Yet, it does not look like Taiwan's exports in general are going to drop significantly because of this, as the country's exports are increasing in general.

In a bid to verify our guesses about shipments of fully equipped AI servers and other expensive machines that used to be assembled in China in the early 2020s before the U.S. government introduced export controls on advanced AI and HPC processors in 2022 – 2023, we decided to check the statistics published by Taiwan's International Trade Administration (ITA).

In total, Taiwan exported some $198.2 billion worth of goods to the U.S. in 2025, up from $111.3 billion in 2024, a dramatic increase. Meanwhile, product code 84 — which includes everything from PCs to AI servers and nuclear reactors — was by far Taiwan's largest export category when it comes to trading with the U.S. Taiwan shipped $145.78 billion worth of code 84 products to the U.S. in 2025, up a whopping 127% from $64.173 billion in 2024. When it comes to Taiwan's traditional main export products — semiconductors, product code 85 — their sales to the U.S. increase noticeably to $28.786 billion in 2025, from $23.804 billion in 2024.

But Taiwan's global exports of products code 84 — which includes AI servers and other sophisticated systems — reached $238.63 billion in 2025, up a staggering 93.5% from $123.27 billion in 2024, which means that Taiwan increased shipments of such machines not only to the U.S., but also to other countries, including those in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Given such growth, it looks like these countries will easily replace the U.S. as importers of Taiwanese advanced systems once Foxconn, Quanta, and Wistron start to ramp production in newly built facilities in the U.S. later this decade. As far as exports of chips (products code 85) are concerned, their sales also increased from $224.31 billion in 2024 to $276.7 billion in 2025, which represents a strong 23.4% growth, but is far lower compared to the increase in exports of sophisticated systems, such as AI servers.

Taiwan's trade with China is another interesting factor to consider. Despite political pressure from Beijing, Taiwan still increased its exports to China to $100 billion, modestly up from $96.54 billion a year before. Surprisingly, export of chips remained flat at $7.726 billion (vs. $7.763 billion a year before) year-over-year in 2025. This is likely the result of U.S. export controls and a developing semiconductor industry in the People’s Republic. As for code 85 products, which include advanced systems, their exports from Taiwan to China increased by 6.3% to $69.034 billion in 2025 from 2024.

Trade deficit between U.S. and China persists

Perhaps the most ironic thing about dramatically lowering exports from China to the U.S. is that the trade imbalance between the two countries remains significant, according to official statistics published by DigiTimes. In December alone, the U.S. recorded a $12.7 billion trade deficit with China, smaller only than deficits with the European Union, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Mexico. For 2025, the U.S. trade deficit with China decreased by $93.4 billion, but it still reached $202.1 billion.

Meanwhile, the deficit with Taiwan more than doubled, climbing to nearly $147 billion, which demonstrates that while sourcing patterns are changing amid the trade war between the U.S. and China, the overall U.S. trade gap remains large.