Editorial Team
5 min read
South Korea and Taiwan each surpassed Japan in first-half 2026 exports, according to a reported analysis. Record semiconductor and technology shipments were central to their growth, but Japan's exports also increased and the comparison spans different currencies, trade baskets and price conditions.
South Korea and Taiwan have moved ahead of Japan in first-half exports, a marker of how demand for the hardware behind artificial intelligence is reshaping trade flows in East Asia. It is not, however, a clean league table of industrial strength: the totals are in different currencies and include very different mixes of goods, while prices and exchange rates affected the result.
The shift rests on exceptionally fast growth in two economies deeply exposed to the AI hardware build-out. South Korea's trade ministry recorded its highest-ever first-half exports; Taiwan's finance ministry reported a record as well. Japan's exports rose too, but higher oil costs and currency effects complicated its trade ledger.
First-half export growth reported by South Korea’s trade ministry and Taiwan’s finance ministry data via Focus Taiwan. Source: Korea Ministry of Trade Industry and Resources.
Selected South Korean first-half export values reported by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources. Source: Korea Ministry of Trade Industry and Resources.
Taiwan Ministry of Finance Table 2 compares export goods across June, the second quarter and January–June 2026. Source: Taiwan Ministry of Finance.
South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources, the government body that compiles the country's trade data and sets export policy, said in its release that first-half exports rose 48.4% year on year to $496.7 billion. Semiconductor exports rose 162.6% to $192.4 billion, already above the previous full-year record of $173.4 billion set in 2025.
The ministry linked the semiconductor result to higher memory-contract prices and expanded AI-server investment. Chips made up about 39% of the reported first-half export total, calculated from those two figures. Computer exports rose 262% to $21.2 billion, also surpassing their previous annual record in six months.
That does not make the record solely a chip result. Non-semiconductor exports increased 16%, and 14 of the country's 20 major export items posted gains. Petroleum-product export value rose despite lower volume as oil prices rose; cosmetics and agricultural and fisheries products also set first-half records. The broad gains limit a thesis that the ranking was produced by AI demand alone, even as chips supplied the sharpest acceleration.
Taiwan's Ministry of Finance said in a report on its preliminary customs statistics that first-half exports rose 47.1% to $416.66 billion. Beatrice Tsai, the ministry's Department of Statistics director, attributed June's strength to demand for advanced chips, servers and other AI-related components, as well as seasonal stocking and higher export prices amid tight electronics supply.
The category split shows the imbalance. In June, information, communication and audiovisual-product exports were $33.92 billion and electronic-component exports were $25.39 billion; together, the categories rose 52.9% from a year earlier. Traditional industries grew 6.9%. In the second quarter, electronic and ICT-product exports rose 56.9%, compared with 9.4% for traditional industrial goods.
Taiwan's trade growth was not only a U.S. story. Exports to each of its five major overseas markets set first-half records, the ministry said, although the United States was the fastest-growing destination, up 69%. Its $104 billion first-half surplus with the United States also passed $100 billion for the first time.
Japan's Ministry of Finance reported first-half exports of 60.6 trillion yen, nearly 14% higher than a year earlier, and imports of 61.9 trillion yen, nearly 11% higher, leaving a deficit of about 1 trillion yen, according to the report on the provisional data. Semiconductor shipments contributed to June export growth, when exports rose 19% to 10.9 trillion yen.
The currency and energy context matters for any cross-border comparison. The report said the dollar had traded around 163 yen, versus roughly 140 yen a year earlier, a move that raised the yen value of dollar-priced exports and imports. Japan imports virtually all of its oil; disruption to traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and higher oil prices pushed up the import bill.
South Korea faced a version of the same energy-price pressure: its first-half energy imports rose 6.6% to $63.5 billion, while its overall trade balance was a $138.3 billion surplus. The contrast illustrates why an export ranking and a measure of trade resilience answer different questions.
The next data will need to separate volumes from prices. In South Korea, the key test is whether chip exports keep rising if memory-contract prices cool, and whether growth remains broad enough to offset weakness in automobiles and Middle East shipments. In Taiwan, the relevant comparison is whether traditional industries narrow their large growth gap with ICT and electronic products.
For Japan, the outstanding evidence is whether exports and semiconductor shipments can keep expanding while the yen and oil costs move in less favorable directions. South Korea's trade ministry has also flagged U.S. tariff measures, oil-price volatility and a potential global slowdown as second-half risks. The first-half result identifies the current beneficiaries of AI-infrastructure spending; it does not yet establish a permanent reshuffling of regional export power.
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