TAIPEI (Reuters) – Germany has called on Taiwan to persuade Taiwanese manufacturers to help alleviate the shortage of semiconductor chips in the automotive sector, hampering its economic recovery since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Automakers around the world are shutting down assembly lines because of semiconductor delivery problems, which in some cases have been exacerbated by the former Trump administration’s actions against key Chinese chip factories.
The deficit affected Volkswagen VOWG_p.DE, Ford Motor Co FN, Subaru Corp 7270.T, Toyota Motor Corp 7203.T, Nissan Motor Co Ltd 7201.T, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and other car manufacturers.
In a letter seen by Reuters on Sunday, German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier asked his Taiwanese counterpart Wang Mei-hua to address the issue in talks with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) 2330. TW, the largest chip maker in the world and one of the main German suppliers.
“I would be delighted if you could address this issue and emphasize the importance of additional semiconductor capacities for the German automotive industry for TSMC,” Altmaier wrote.
Altmaier said the goal is to enable additional capacity and short- and medium-term semiconductor deliveries.
He said the German car industry had already had direct talks with TSMC about hiking deliveries and there were “very constructive” signals from TSMC to resolve the issue.
A spokeswoman for the German economy ministry said she was monitoring the situation very closely and was in talks with the car industry on the issue.
DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY
To reduce dependence on Asian suppliers and avoid similar problems in the future, Berlin now intends to increase state support to increase semiconductor production capacity in Germany and Europe, the spokesman added.
The Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs said it had received requests through diplomatic channels to help reduce the chip deficit for the automotive sector, although it was not aware of Altmaier’s letter.
He said he had begun talks with domestic chip suppliers in response to requests from other countries and asked them to “provide full assistance”.
“The relevant supply and demand situation is also closely linked to car chip factory’s plans to reduce off-season stocks,” the ministry said.
TSMC said in a statement that the issue of chip shortages for car companies is very important to them.
“It’s our top priority, and TSMC is working closely with our automotive customers to address capacity support issues,” he said.
Reporting by Michael Nienaber at BERLIN and Jeanny Kao and Ben Blanchard at TAIPEI; Ed