Taiwan

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Nvidia Taipei Headquarters Faces Ongoing Land Rights and Contract Dispute

Oct. 14, 2025 | Firms

Nvidia’s efforts to establish its Taiwan overseas headquarters at the Beitou-Shilin Technology Park have encountered a contract dispute over land surface rights.

**A 50-year surface rights agreement that Shin Kong Life Insurance signed with Taipei City in 2021 covers plots T17 and T18, where Nvidia planned its headquarters.**
Taipei City will formally request mutual termination of that contract, with Deputy Mayor Lee Sichuan set to send an official letter to Shin Kong Life on October 13, 2025. The city stands ready to negotiate termination terms that avoid any allegations of breach of trust by Shin Kong Life’s board.

**After merging with Taishin Life under Taishin Shin Kong Financial Holdings in July, Shin Kong Life has publicly expressed its willingness to cooperate on this nationally strategic project.**
However, the company has not submitted formal termination conditions, citing potential losses of NT$10.7 billion in future profits. Taipei City previously offered a NT$3 billion separation fee, which it considers reasonable but Shin Kong Life regards as insufficient. In response, Shin Kong Life has urged activation of the contract’s coordination committee to negotiate a mutually acceptable solution.

**Should plots T17 and T18 remain unavailable, Nvidia has studied the T12 parcel in Beitou-Shilin and the Songnan barracks area near Songshan Airport as alternatives.**
Taipei City has pledged to assist in land integration efforts for these or other candidate sites.

Complicating matters, Shin Kong Life’s merger requires municipal approval to transfer the surface rights, and Taipei City has withheld that approval because the company failed to develop the T17 and T18 parcels within the agreed timeframe.

**In March 2025, Taipei City declined to renew the ground leases for T17 and T18, citing Nan Shan Life Insurance’s—Shin Kong Life’s previous name—lack of development over three years.**
In May 2025, the company signed a memorandum of understanding with Nvidia and called for the contractual coordination committee to resolve outstanding issues and advance the project.

**Public and political tensions have grown as senior commentator Zhou Yukou criticized city officials for inconsistent statements, recalling Mayor Chiang Wan-an’s earlier threat to terminate the contract and reports that Shin Kong Life demanded over NT$10 billion in compensation.**
Shin Kong Life chairman Wei Baosheng denied those figures, said Nvidia stood ready to provide compensation, and accused Deputy Mayor Lee Sichuan of misrepresenting key facts. Contradictory remarks from various city officials have underlined tensions within the municipal administration.

**Central government figures, including President Lai Ching-te, have pledged support for retaining Nvidia’s headquarters in Taiwan.**
The Ministry of Economic Affairs has identified five potential alternative sites nationwide, and Taipei City Council members are pressing the administration to keep Nvidia in Taipei. Both central and local governments continue working to resolve the stalemate, which has now persisted for nearly five months and raised concerns about its impact on Taiwan’s AI industrial development plans.

Taiwan Memory Sector Rally Faces Geopolitical and Market Headwinds

Oct. 14, 2025 | Geopolitics & Defense

Recent movements in Taiwan’s stock market reflect strong memory‐sector momentum alongside intensifying geopolitical pressures.

**The Taiwan Stock Exchange weighted index closed at 27,301.92 points on October 9, 2025, rising 0.88% as robust momentum in the memory sector drove gains.**
Tight supply and demand for HDD, SSD, and DRAM products underpin price strength for both DDR4 and DDR3, and Morgan Stanley forecasts further increases in Q4. Nanya Technology led the advance, surging 8.48% to NT$98.5 with trading volume up by 177,698 lots, while Winbond climbed 5.33% on volumes exceeding 540,000 shares. Since the start of October, Nanya and Winbond have posted cumulative gains of 34.93% and 27.61%, respectively.

**ADATA chairman Chen Libai described the memory market as “so good it gives us a headache,” noting that three major international manufacturers have ceased DDR4 production and dismantled related equipment with no plans to resume.**
That dismantling has widened the supply gap, benefiting Taiwanese DDR4 producers. Chen expects the memory market to remain robust for at least two more years and anticipates ADATA’s core operations to reach record highs this year. He added that many devices—such as set‐top boxes, communication equipment, and televisions—will continue using DDR4 due to high redesign costs, even as industry majors shift capacity toward higher‐margin HBM. ADATA’s inventory of DRAM and NAND Flash stands at just over NT$10 billion.

**The US-China trade dispute intensified when President Trump announced on October 10 a 100% tariff on Chinese imports effective November 1 and expanded export controls.**
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index plunged over 6%, and TSMC’s ADR fell more than 6%, triggering panic in Taiwan. On October 13, the Taiwan weighted index opened 831.48 points lower, dipped below 27,000, and closed down 1.71% on a turnover of NT$426.52 billion. Memory chip makers suffered the steepest losses and highest trading volumes, with Hua Bang Electric and Power-Foundry among the hardest hit, and Nanya Technology and Hon Hai also registering declines.

**Despite geopolitical strains, foreign investors bought a net NT$4.451 billion on October 9, sustaining weekly gains.**
Taiwan’s AI-driven growth narrative, anchored by Nvidia’s planned partnership with OpenAI and the emergence of AI as critical infrastructure, continues to fuel optimism. Innolux, Quanta, and WIN Semiconductors reported both year-on-year and month-on-month revenue growth for September, attracting institutional interest amid volatility. Delta Electronics rose past NT$1,000 intraday on strong AI server and data center demand, marking its third consecutive quarter of record revenues.

**Escalating tensions from China’s rare earth export restrictions and US retaliatory measures have pushed the New Taiwan dollar beyond 30.6 to the US dollar and weighed on local stocks.**
Defense shares rallied after President Lai Ching-te proposed a significant boost in defense spending under the “Taiwan Shield” strategy during his National Day speech, suggesting a potential upswing for defense contractors. Green energy names, including Senwei Energy and its subsidiaries, also posted gains and are viewed as oversold opportunities.

**TSMC’s share price drop erased over NT$1 trillion in market capitalization, though analysts remain cautiously optimistic that upcoming earnings could spark a recovery.**
Other major tech firms, such as Hon Hai, Wistron, and Quanta, also saw share declines. In response, foreign investors reduced holdings in TSMC and Hon Hai while increasing stakes in Mitac and Compeq. A land rights dispute between Shin Kong Life and the Taipei City Government has delayed NVIDIA’s plan to establish its headquarters in the Northern Science Park, as the government insists on contractual compliance before transferring land rights post-merger.

### IMPACT ANALYSIS
**From this Development, various impacts could cascade through the system, to a lesser or greater extent, depending on the severity and criticality of the shocks.**

Domain	Causal Chain	Possible Outcome
Technology & Innovation	(Dual-use export-control restrictiveness ↑ → Semiconductor fab utilisation rate ↓ → High-tech export volume surprise ↓ → Unicorn creation count ↓)	Stricter export controls reduce fab utilisation and export volumes, undermining venture capital flow and diminishing the number of new tech unicorns.
Firms	(Supply-chain restructuring cadence ↑ → Backorder ratio spike ↑ → Capacity-utilisation in manufacturing ↓ → Business fixed-investment growth deviation ↓)	Accelerated supply-chain reshuffling fuels backorders and lowers plant utilisation, leading firms to scale back capital expenditures and underperform investment expectations.
Energy & Natural Resources	(Critical-mineral import concentration index ↑ → Strategic-commodity price volatility ↑ → Input-cost inflation ↑ → Inflation volatility ↑)	Greater reliance on concentrated mineral imports exacerbates commodity price swings and drives up volatile input costs, heightening overall inflation volatility.
Financial System	(Financial-system depth & efficiency ↓ → Corporate bond spread blowout ↑ → Corporate default rate surge ↑ → Output gap (% GDP) ↓)	Declining market depth inflates bond spreads and spikes defaults, curbing lending and widening the GDP output gap.
Infrastructure & Urbanization	(Land-use zoning flexibility index ↓ → Infrastructure project delivery delays ↑ → Business fixed-investment growth deviation ↓ → Potential GDP growth revision ↓)	Tighter zoning enforcement stalls infrastructure builds, depresses business capital investment, and forces downward revisions to potential GDP growth.

### BOTTOM LINE

- Core drivers of the current episode are (1) an abrupt US policy escalation (100% tariff and wider export controls) that raises export-control restrictiveness for dual-use semiconductors, (2) the voluntary exit and physical dismantling of DDR4 capacity by three global vendors that tightens legacy-memory supply, (3) Beijing’s rare-earth export curbs and reciprocal US measures that raise strategic-material concentration and currency pressure, (4) a sharp market re-pricing led by TSMC’s >NT$1 trillion market-cap decline that reduced liquidity and foreign investor confidence, and (5) localized frictions such as the NVIDIA Northern Science Park land-rights dispute that delay critical AI infrastructure builds.

- The clearest causal edge runs from US policy escalation → constrained access to advanced process tools and IP → lower fab utilisation for affected nodes → semiconductor export volumes below expectations → investor risk aversion in high-tech, which in turn reduces venture funding for deep-tech startups and slows new high-value firm formation.

- A parallel causal path is DDR4 capacity exits by major vendors → immediate DDR4/DDR3 supply deficit → higher prices and windfall margins for Taiwanese DDR4/commodity-memory producers (e.g., Nanya, Winbond, ADATA) → short-term revenue and inventory improvements for those firms, but with the risk that sustained policy, demand or re-design pressures could compress margins once supply rebalances.

- China’s rare-earth export restrictions → higher concentration of critical-mineral sourcing and price volatility → increased input-cost uncertainty for chipmakers and green-energy equipment manufacturers → pass-through to OEMs and potential upward pressure on consumer/investor inflation expectations, complicating corporate planning and central-bank calibration.

- TSMC’s rapid market-cap erosion → foreign portfolio reallocation away from heavyweight Taiwan tech names and into selective midcaps (as observed with Mitac and Compeq) → lower market depth and wider credit spreads for issuers → higher funding costs for smaller firms and a tangible risk of solvency stress among leveraged mid-sized suppliers.

- The currency pathway is straightforward: geopolitical escalation and export/rare-earth frictions → capital flight and FX pressure → New Taiwan dollar depreciation past 30.6/USD → imported-input costs rise for manufacturers and local inflationary pressure increases, while exporters see mixed effects depending on dollar revenue exposure.

- In the near term, the most likely market outcomes are: continued volatility with episodic rallies for legacy-memory producers benefiting from DDR4 tightness, persistent weakness in advanced-node equipment-sensitive names (TSMC, tool vendors), and selective rotation into defense and AI-adjacent suppliers that are perceived as policy beneficiaries or less exposed to export constraints.

- For supply chains, expect accelerated supplier diversification and re-shoring conversations, higher backorder ratios and shorter-term capacity underutilisation as firms reallocate procurement, and increased inventories for critical legacy components by Taiwanese firms seeking to hedge shortfalls—actions that lift working-capital needs and may depress free cash flow.

- For policymakers, probable consequences include pressure to strengthen strategic stockpiles of critical minerals, prioritize diplomatic channels to de-escalate tariffs/export-control frictions, provide targeted liquidity support or credit lines to mid-sized suppliers, and fast-track land/zoning resolutions for priority AI and semiconductor projects to avoid investment flight.

- For corporate actors, the practical playbook is to hedge FX and commodity exposure, triage capital spending toward preserving short-term cash and securing legacy-memory supply contracts, accelerate product roadmaps that mitigate exposure to export-constrained technologies, and pursue contingency manufacturing footprints outside the most exposed jurisdictions.

- For investors, recommended actions are to re-weight portfolios toward names with near-term cash-flow visibility from DDR4/commodity-memory tailwinds, to reduce concentrated exposure to advanced-node tool chains likely to be hit by export controls, and to monitor foreign-institution flows and corporate-bond spreads as leading indicators for funding stress among mid-cap suppliers.

- The single biggest systemic risk to monitor is sustained policy escalation between the US and China that keeps advanced-node tool access constrained; if that persists beyond quarters, the temporary gains for Taiwanese legacy-memory firms could be overwhelmed by broader export declines, higher funding costs, and slower long-term innovation—so watch fab utilisation rates, corporate-bond spreads, and foreign-investor net flows closely as early warning signals.

Monitored Intelligence for Taiwan - Oct. 14, 2025

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Erudite Risk takes an all risks approach to intelligence reporting. We categorize key intelligence into one of 40 different risk intelligence categories.

The goal is to provide intelligence that allows decision makers to avoid being blindsided by what they may have missed, while informing them to make better decisions as well.

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錢進歐洲1／貿易戰升溫、美移民政策收緊專家：歐股成全球資金新避風港

Investing in Europe 1/ Trade War Heats Up, US Tightens Immigration Policy Experts: European Stocks Become Global Capital's New Safe Haven

Yahoo News Taiwan | Local Language | News | Oct. 14, 2025 | Geopolitical Conflict and Disputes

With the return of Trump to the White House, US trade and immigration policies have tightened, reigniting the US-China trade war particularly over rare earth elements. This escalation led to a sharp plunge in US stocks, contrasting with the European market where the European Central Bank's loose monetary policy and Germany's increased infrastructure and fiscal spending have made European stocks a new safe haven for global capital. Experts advise investors to diversify by increasing allocations in Europe and other non-US markets amid these shifts.

The renewed trade tensions and restrictive US immigration policies have sown unease in the market. Despite US stocks hitting new highs, some investors are reallocating globally due to concerns that immigration restrictions will undermine US national strength and innovation. Academic experts warn that declining US access to global talent will harm its innovation-driven industries, potentially pushing companies to relocate research and development operations to Europe and Canada, which are better positioned to absorb this talent influx.

Amidst these geopolitical tensions, Taiwan's stock market faces significant pressure. Following Trump's announcement of a 100% tariff on Chinese goods starting November 1, US indices and related markets like Taiwan's saw sharp declines. Major Taiwanese companies and investors were hit hard, and the outlook for Taiwan's National Day rally is pessimistic. However, there is increased investor interest in diversified ETFs and gold, the latter benefiting from easier trading conditions and heightened demand among retail investors.

The article also highlights notable events across various sectors, including strong earnings growth for Taiwanese gaming-stock Soft-World, significant liquidity events in the cryptocurrency market following trade tensions, and entertainment and sports news. Despite the turbulent market environment, certain Taiwanese stock ETFs show net inflows, indicating selective investor confidence. Overall, the global investment landscape is undergoing significant realignment driven by US policy shifts and evolving capital flows.

《台北股市》機器人利空浮現？特斯拉Optimus卡在這裡亞光等台鏈哭了

Taipei Stock Market Robot Downside Emerging? Tesla Optimus Stuck Here, Taiwan Supply Chain Including Ya Guang Faces Trouble

Yahoo Finance | Local Language | News | Oct. 14, 2025 | Supply Chain Issues

Tesla has suspended its 2025 mass production of the Optimus humanoid robot due to unresolved technical challenges, particularly the lack of flexibility in the robot’s hands and arms. The development team, despite nearly a year of efforts, could not resolve these issues, leading to a shelving of production plans and a pivot toward further research and development. This setback has negatively impacted the Taiwan supply chain associated with Optimus, including companies like Ya Guang, Mengli, HIWIN, and Luo Sheng, whose stocks dropped over 3% in early trading. Market rumors suggest Tesla lowered its 2025 production target from 5,000 to 2,000 units and halted component procurement to focus on hardware and software adjustments. Tesla CEO Elon Musk had previously touted the Optimus robot as a major future value driver for the company.

In parallel, Tesla introduced more affordable versions of the Model Y and Model 3 priced below $40,000 to counteract the impact of discontinued U.S. electric vehicle tax credits and intensified market competition. However, these cheaper models come with significant feature reductions, such as the removal of Level 2 autonomous driving capabilities in the Model Y Standard. Tesla’s Shanghai factory reported 90,812 vehicle shipments in September, a 2.8% year-on-year increase, providing a respite amid earlier declines and underpinning expectations for stronger fourth-quarter demand in China. Despite this, Tesla is facing increased regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched a preliminary investigation into Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system after multiple reports of traffic violations.

On the international innovation front, several Chinese companies gained recognition in Time magazine’s 2025 list of best inventions, including Unitree Technology’s humanoid robot, DeepSeek’s AI model, and Huawei’s new smartphone, underscoring China’s rising technological capabilities in AI and robotics. Meanwhile, in China, sensor technology for humanoid robots is a growing focus, supported by government policies and significant funding aimed at boosting domestic production and advancing robot intelligence from basic to more sophisticated levels.

In the broader tech market, Samsung Electronics is expected to report its highest quarterly profit since 2022, driven by increased demand and rising prices for conventional memory chips used in servers and AI applications. However, challenges remain with high-end memory products like HBM3E, which have not yet been delivered to major customers such as NVIDIA. Equities markets experienced volatility driven by U.S.-China trade tensions, including tariff increases announced by President Trump, which caused sharp declines in major tech stocks including NVIDIA, Tesla, and TSMC.

花蓮一級開設何時降級？劉世芳籲花縣府速清查保全戶

When Will Hualien's Level 1 Alert Be Downgraded? Liu Shih-fang Urges Hualien County Government to Quickly Verify Protected Households

United Daily News | Local Language | News | Oct. 14, 2025 | Natural Disasters

Hualien’s Mata’ian Creek dammed lake has caused a major disaster, compounded recently by earthquakes, leading to the Central Emergency Response Center maintaining a level one alert. Interior Minister Liu Shih-fang emphasized that downgrading the alert requires the dam structure’s stability, continuous slope monitoring, and inclusion of unspecified downstream populations in evacuation and withdrawal plans. She urged the Hualien County Government to quickly verify the households under protection and stressed the importance of wargames to accurately reflect evacuation procedures.

The Legislative Yuan’s Internal Affairs Committee conducted a special session involving multiple ministries to discuss dammed lake monitoring, disaster warnings, evacuation mechanisms, and recovery efforts. Liu reiterated the need for cooperation among the central forward coordination office, Hualien County Government, and Minister without Portfolio Ji Lien-cheng, noting that evacuation plans cover Guangfu, Wanrong, and Fenglin townships, where transient populations due to volunteers and agencies pose evacuation challenges.

Evacuation drills involving schoolchildren have begun, and further action depends on approval from Hualien County Magistrate Hsu Chen-wei. Ji Lien-cheng confirmed that future evacuation plans will include a wargame, vital for reflecting realistic conditions given the severe damage to infrastructure and shelters. Accurate lists of protected households by local offices are essential to this process.

The disaster has resulted in 19 deaths and five missing persons, with ongoing search and rescue efforts. The Taiwan Sugar Corporation has provided temporary housing options for victims, and repair efforts are underway to support those with damaged homes. Concerns remain about flood risk and potential slope collapses following heavy rains and earthquakes, prompting heightened monitoring and legislative oversight.

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