ABSTRACT
Like every democratically elected president in Taiwan before her, in her first term, President Tsai proposed and implemented various industrial policies designed to create new or bolster hopefully emergent industries. Unfortunately, industrial policy has proven to be increasingly irrelevant in terms of failing to deliver on upgrading new or inchoate industries in Taiwan. This increasing irrelevance of industrial policy preceded Tsai's administration and has deep structural and institutional roots. To the extent that industrial policy was impactful during Tsai's first term, it did so by supporting existing industries and firms, such as TSMC, and via the continued hidden industrial policy of currency intervention to promote exports. Taiwan's economy and Tsai's administration did benefit from Trump's trade war with China. Recent trends such as the return of Taiwanese manufacturing from China would not have occurred without the trade war. However, any future broader decoupling between the US and China's economies beyond that of Trump's limited trade war could badly hurt Taiwan.
