ING Chief Economist for Greater China, Lynn Song, highlights that Taiwan’s March trade data significantly exceeded expectations, with exports and imports rising sharply and the trade surplus more than doubling in the first quarter of 2026. The report highlights Taiwan’s growing reliance on technology-related exports, rising export prices and significant upside surprises, prompting an escalate in GDP growth forecasts to 2026 despite the risks associated with energy.
The technology-driven trade boom is changing growth prospects
“Despite the positive surprise in import growth, the boom in exports has far outpaced faster imports when looking at the trade balance. Taiwan’s trade balance rose to a five-month high of $21.3 billion, while the trade surplus in Q1’26 widened to $53.0 billion, an increase of 124.2% year-on-year. These outperformance will likely translate into another quarter of double-digit GDP growth when Taiwan reports at the end GDP growth in the first quarter of 2026.
“Sustained outperformance has led to Taiwan’s trade and economy becoming increasingly concentrated and dependent on this segment; the subcategory accounted for 84.0% of total exports in the first quarter of 2026, up from 80.4% in 2025 and 73.2% in 2024.”
“However, we cannot once again ignore the trade surplus, which more than doubled in the first quarter of 2026, especially considering that the last time it happened was in Q4 2025, and net exports added as much as 11.9 percentage points to GDP growth. Market forecasts continue to be lower than actual growth even after the waves of growth. We are taking another shot, raising our GDP forecast for Q1 2026 from 10.2% to 11.5% y/y, and our full-year GDP forecast to 8.2% y/y from 6.7%.”
“While we believe Taiwan’s economic growth will be able to absorb higher energy prices as long as the global tech boom and AI-related investments continue, energy shortages potentially impacting production are a different story. As such, our forecasts depend on some type of resolution reached in Iran in the coming weeks or months, or at least limited supply disruptions leading to higher prices, but not actual shortages.”
(This article was created with the aid of an artificial intelligence tool and has been reviewed by an editor.)
