TAIPEI (Reuters) – Germany has asked Taiwan to convince Taiwanese manufacturers to help reduce the shortage of semiconductor chips in the automotive sector, hampering the fledgling economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Automakers around the world are closing assembly lines due to semiconductor supply issues, exacerbated in some cases by the actions of the former Trump administration against major Chinese chip factories.
The shortage affects 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 spotted by Reuters on Sunday, German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier asked his Taiwanese counterpart Wang Mei-hua to raise the issue in talks with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) 2330.TW, ‘s world’s largest chip manufacturer and one of the German manufacturers. main suppliers.
“I would appreciate if you could address this issue and underline the importance of additional semiconductor capabilities for the German automotive industry for TSMC,” wrote Altmaier.
Altmaier said the goal was to enable additional capabilities and semiconductor deliveries in the short and medium term.
The German auto industry was already in direct talks with TSMC about hiking deliveries, and there were “very constructive” signals from TSMC to fix the problem, he wrote.
A spokeswoman for the German Economy Ministry said it is closely monitoring the situation and is in discussion with the auto industry about this.
DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY
To reduce dependence on Asian suppliers and avoid similar problems in the future, Berlin now plans to increase state aid to boost semiconductor manufacturing capacity in Germany and Europe, the spokeswoman added.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Economy said it had received requests through diplomatic channels to reduce the shortage of chips for the automotive sector, although it was not aware of Altmaier’s letter.
It said it had started talks with domestic chip suppliers in response to requests from other countries, asking them to “provide full assistance.”
“The relevant supply and demand situation is also closely related to automotive chip factories’ plans to reduce off-season stocks,” the ministry said.
TSMC said in a statement that the problem of chip shortage for car companies was very important to them.
“It is our top priority and TSMC is working closely with our automotive customers to resolve the capacity support issues,” he said.
Reporting by Michael Nienaber in BERLIN and Jeanny Kao and Ben Blanchard in TAIPEI; Ed