Taiwan’s Minister Says That TSMC Lost Orders From China’s Huawei Technologies

On Monday, a government minister said that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has made up its order book with other customers as it has lost China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd. The company is subject to U.S. sales restrictions.

Huawei’s chip division, HiSilicon was TSMC’s clients. However, the U.S. blacklisting of Huawei over security concerns with China. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker has been justifying exposure to diplomatic developments between the two countries.

The company has unveiled a plan, last month, for a $12-billion plant in the United States. This happened just hours before the U.S. Commerce Department proposed an amend for chip export rules. This move restricted sales of TSMC’s to Huawei.

Implementation of this amendment imposed a need for licenses for sales on semiconductors that were made abroad with U.S. technology to Huawei.

Kung Ming-Hsin, the new head of Taiwan’s National Development Council, and economic planning agency said that the U.S.A. is taking action to specifically target the company and not Taiwan’s economic relations with China.

Kung said that “The United States has not asked Taiwan to cut off all ties with China. It’s aimed at Huawei.”  The reason that the U.S.A. might be targeting Huawei is that the company was not transparent and had too close ties with the Chinese government. The U.S. in its part has denied these charges made by the company.

Kung added by saying “As for TSMC, although their orders no longer have Huawei, they’ve quickly been filled up, as other people need them.” Many U.S. tech giants such as Apple Inc are clients of TSMC. The chairman of TSMC said that this month the firm will be able to quickly fill any order gap should U.S. curbs prevent sales to Huawei.