Coronavirus: US firms expect outbreak to hit Taiwan economy, with China trade war fears also lingering

American Chamber of Commerce survey found that US firms cut Taiwan economic outlook in 2020 after announcement of coronavirus outbreak

But more than 70 per cent of American firms surveyed remain optimistic about Taiwan’s economy in the longer run, despite US-China trade war concerns

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The deadly respiratory disease that the virus causes, Covid-19, has spared Taiwan with less than 50 reported cases out of the nearly 98,000 worldwide as of Friday. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 3:15pm, 7 Mar 2020Updated: 3:15pm, 7 Mar 2020

Half of American companies with operations in Taiwan now expect the island’s economy to weaken in 2020 due to the fallout from the coronavirus outbreak, a new study found.

A further three-quarters of US firms reported that their business has been adversely affected by the long-running US-China trade war, according to the survey by the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Taipei.

Some 60 per cent of American companies surveyed from mid-January to mid-February expressed confidence about Taiwanese growth over the next 12 months. However, that percentage fell to 53 per cent after the announcement of the coronavirus outbreak in late-January, down from 73 per cent before the extent of the virus became public.

“The big drop after the virus story broke was apparently due to a realisation that the outbreak would cause significant economic damage and disruption,” said AmCham Taipei president William Foreman. “The inability to predict when the outbreak would end also caused uncertainty that weighed heavily on sentiment and eroded confidence in the economic outlook.”

The coronavirus outbreak is hitting companies in the civil aviation and hotel sectors particularly hard, the chamber said, without identifying specific firms.