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In a statement, the Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs has asserted that a recent US requirement to have licenses approved to ship chip manufacturing gear to China will have a limited impact on TSMC’s operations. The statement follows a report from Bloomberg, confirmed by TSMC, which had outlined that the US government had ended a license waiver program for the machines the firm imported for its Chinese chip manufacturing facility in Nanjing. In its response, TSMC had asserted that it aimed to ensure the “uninterrupted operation of TSMC Nanjing” while working and communicating with the US government.
Taiwan’s Economic Ministry Asserts Domestic Firms Should Strengthen Export Control Compliance To Ensure Smooth Operations
TSMC is the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer and has secured a key place for itself courtesy of its leading-edge chip manufacturing technologies. According to the firm’s latest earnings release, 75% of its sales are from North America, with China and Asia Pacific coming in second place with a 9% share for each. Particularly for China, the country’s revenue share dropped by seven percentage points in Q2 2025 over Q2 2024, while its North America revenue marked a ten percentage point growth.
In its statement responding to the new US rules regarding chip manufacturing imports in China, Taiwan’s economic affairs ministry notes TSMC’s limited reliance on Chinese revenue. The new rules revoke the Biden-era Validated End User (VEU) status for TSMC’s chip manufacturing facility in Nanjing, China.
The VEU status had waived license requirements to import equipment for the facility, and the revocation brought TSMC in line with the status of Samsung and SK hynix, whose waivers were also revoked earlier.
TSMC’s Nanjing facility is responsible for manufacturing chips with older technologies. The most advanced technology available to customers procuring from the site is 16-nanometers, and the earlier waivers had facilitated American and Japanese firms such as Applied Materials, KLA Corporation and Tokyo Electron to quickly ship equipment to China.
Taiwan’s economic ministry’s statement regarding the latest US rules urged domestic firms to meet all export control rules in order to ensure that their global operations are not impacted. It added that since the Nanjing plant accounts for roughly 3% of TSMC’s revenue, the latest rules will not significantly impact either TSMC or Taiwan’s global competitiveness.
The ministry outlined that the new rules mean that TSMC and its suppliers will have to follow a case-by-case approval of the chip import license, and apart from the Nanjing fab, no other TSMC facilities in China are affected by the new rules.
Due to the high prices that it can command, TSMC generates the bulk of its revenue from leading-edge chip manufacturing technologies. During its second fiscal quarter, 60% of the firm’s $30 billion in revenue came from its 3-nanometer and 5-nanometer technologies. On the other hand, 16-nanometer and 20-nanometer products accounted for 7% of TSMC’s sales.
