Taiwan Rep / Notes

About 94% of Taiwan's export receipts are in US dollars. Who takes the hit when the NT dollar jumps?

A Taiwan bolt maker that quotes in dollars still pays wages in NT dollars. In 2025 the NT dollar rose about 11% against the dollar in three months. Taiwan's export price index for steel goods rose only 3% in dollar terms over those months, then trended higher for more than a year. Here's what the data shows, what it can't show, and what to agree with a supplier before the next move.

Updated October 13, 2026. Monthly exchange rates and export price indices run to September 2026, export receipt statistics to August 2026, and daily rates to October 12, all from the Central Bank and the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, read that day.

A dollar quote from Taiwan feels like it puts the currency question on the supplier's side of the table. Under a fixed dollar price with no adjustment clause, it does: you owe the same number of dollars whatever happens to the NT dollar. But a supplier's wages and many local costs are paid in NT dollars, and when the rate moves fast, it may try to recover the difference in a later quote. This note covers what currency Taiwan's exporters are paid in, what the NT dollar did in 2025, what Taiwan's export price statistics show afterward, and what to agree with a supplier before the next move.

What Taiwan's exporters are paid in

The Central Bank publishes monthly statistics on export receipts handled through Taiwan's authorized banks, broken down by currency and by method of payment. By currency, as shares of the US-dollar-equivalent value:

Shares are rounded, so columns may not add to exactly 100%. By value, remittances made up 96.3% of recorded export receipts in 2025 and 97.2% in January to August 2026. Sight and usance letters of credit together were 3.3% and 2.5%, and collections about 0.3% in both periods.

These are economy-wide bank statistics, not customs export values and not figures for fasteners. They are consistent with a Central Bank study published in December 2022, which found that Taiwan's trade is invoiced mainly in US dollars, a pattern economists call dominant currency pricing. In that study's historical series, which leaves out NT dollar invoices, the US dollar's average share of Taiwan's imports and exports was 88.3%.

So a Taiwan bolt maker selling to Europe may well invoice in dollars, and a supplier of imported wire rod may bill it in dollars too, though these figures can't tell you any one company's invoice currency. Some inputs are clearly priced in NT dollars: China Steel announces its domestic price changes in NT dollars per tonne. (Its September 4, 2026 announcement left fourth-quarter prices for bar and wire rod unchanged.)

What the NT dollar did in 2025

The Central Bank also publishes the daily closing rate on Taipei's interbank market and monthly averages of it (geometric means). In NT dollars per US dollar:

Day to day it was sharper. The close went from 33.196 on April 1, 2025 to 28.828 on July 3, a fall of 13% in what a dollar bought. On May 2 and again on May 5 the rate fell about 3% from the previous trading day's close. By September 2026 the monthly average had come back to 31.716, still below April 2025's 32.640.

A hypothetical shows what that means for a supplier. Say a bolt maker sold at a fixed US$3,000 a tonne. Converted at April 2025's average rate, that was NT$97,920; at July's, NT$87,969, a difference of NT$9,951 a tonne. That is a difference in converted revenue, not a measured loss: the result for a real company depends on when it converts dollars (it doesn't have to convert on receipt), any hedging, and any costs it pays in dollars. Its wages, power and domestic steel, though, are still billed in NT dollars.

What Taiwan's export prices did

The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics publishes export price indices by HS chapter, in both NT dollars and US dollars. Its method collects exporters' prices in the contract currency and converts them using monthly averages of banks' daily midpoint rates, which are close to, but not the same as, the Central Bank closing rates above. Fasteners sit in chapter 73, articles of iron or steel, along with tubes, structures, wire products and much else, so this is a chapter-wide index, not a fastener price:

Read the two columns together. Through 2024 and the first four months of 2025 the dollar index stayed between 92.3 and 94.3. From April to July 2025 it rose 3.2%, a much smaller move than the currency's, while the NT dollar index fell 7.3%. The dollar index then trended upward, with dips in a few months, to 7.5% above April 2025 by September 2026. By then the NT dollar index was 4.5% above its April 2025 level.

Here's what that does and doesn't establish. Known: on average, chapter 73 export prices in dollars rose much less than the currency moved in the three months after the jump, and over the following year they rose further while the rate came back only part of the way. Possible explanation: some of the later increase may reflect exporters trying to recover margin squeezed in 2025, but steel costs, demand and tariffs can move prices too, and the index can't separate those effects. Unknown: what any one fastener maker did with its quotes, its invoice currency, its hedging or its margins.

One cross-check. Our US import data note found the average value per kilogram of US fastener imports from Taiwan falling in the first half of 2026. That isn't a contradiction: one is a price index across all chapter 73 exports, the other an average value of one product in one market, affected by product mix and freight.

What to agree before the next move

For a buyer, the practical point is that a sharp currency move can put pressure on a supplier's margin, and it may come back as a price request later, possibly after the rate has partly reversed. That's a scenario to settle in the contract, not a reason to accept or refuse a particular request:

• Validity. How long the quoted dollar price holds, and whether any adjustment would apply to accepted orders, unshipped orders or new orders only.
• A band. Whether either side can reopen the price if the NT$/US$ rate moves more than an agreed amount. Name the series (for example the Central Bank's monthly average), the reference month, the threshold, the formula and whether it works in both directions.
• The cost base. In what currencies the supplier actually pays for its inputs, including imported wire rod bought through a Taiwan trader. All else equal, costs fixed in dollars partly offset dollar sales; imported origin alone doesn't tell you the payment currency.
• Steel separately. If the supplier also wants to pass through steel price changes, keep that clause separate, and check whether the steel reference already reflects the exchange rate, so the same move isn't counted twice. For EU buyers, CBAM costs are calculated separately again.

Back to the question in the title. With a fixed dollar price and unhedged NT dollar costs, the first hit from a jump in the NT dollar lands on your supplier. Taiwan's export price data shows dollar prices for steel goods rising modestly at first and more over the following year, but it can't show how much of any increase reached buyers because of the currency, or when. Judge each request against the supplier's cost base and what your contract says.

Calculations use the data as downloaded on October 13, 2026. Price indices can be revised after release. Receipts by currency and method cover export receipts recorded through authorized banks, not customs values. This is a practical guide for buyers, not financial or legal advice.

Sources

• NT dollar to US dollar closing rate on the Taipei interbank market (銀行間市場新臺幣對美元收盤匯率), daily and monthly averages, Central Bank, via data.gov.tw, read October 13, 2026
• Export and import foreign exchange statistics by major currency (出進口外匯收支統計─主要幣別), Central Bank, via data.gov.tw
• Export and import foreign exchange statistics by method of payment (出進口外匯收支統計─付款方式), Central Bank, via data.gov.tw
• Export price index by HS, in US dollars (出口物價基本分類指數, 按HS, 美元計價) and in NT dollars, Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, data to September 2026, and the agency's description of its compilation method
• The NT dollar exchange rate and Taiwan's terms of trade, from the perspective of invoicing currency (從進出口報價幣別的角度探討新台幣匯率與台灣貿易條件的關係), Central Bank, December 2022
• China Steel price announcement for October and Q4 2026 (中鋼一一五年十月盤及第四季季盤盤價), September 4, 2026: price changes stated in NT dollars per tonne