When Precious Metals Move: Tracking U.S. Imports from Taiwan

This analysis began with Switzerland, where U.S. imports of precious metal articles surged to historic levels. Digging through the same HTS 7115 data, however, revealed another, smaller spike moving in parallel: a sharp increase in imports from Taiwan in 2025. That divergence from Taiwan’s usual trade profile was notable enough to warrant a closer look.

Taiwan’s HTS 7115 exports to the US surged in 2025, broadly mirroring the wider boom in precious metal imports. At face value, this could reflect growth in a specific downstream industry or a response to broader shifts in trade patterns during a period of heightened uncertainty.

A closer breakdown shows that this surge was not broad-based across precious metals. Instead, it was concentrated in a single category: silver articles under HTS 7115.90.0560. Import values had already been rising steadily since 2022, indicating that the 2025 jump was not a sudden, tariff-driven reaction but an acceleration of an existing trend. The most plausible driver behind this sustained growth is rising demand from electronics and artificial intelligence–related applications.

Silver’s role in advanced electronics is well established. As outlined by Thermtest Instruments, its physical properties make it uniquely suited for high-performance applications where efficiency, reliability, and heat management are critical:

Silver’s ability to efficiently carry electrical current is far superior to most other metals, making it an ideal choice for high-performance electronic applications. … Furthermore, the thermal conductivity of silver signifies its suitability for applications where heat dissipation is critical, such as in power electronics. It helps in efficiently dissipating heat generated during the operation of power devices, preventing overheating, and ensuring the devices’ longevity and reliability.

Regarding conductivity, copper is silver’s primary competitor. Both metals exhibit impressive conductivity properties, but each has strengths and weaknesses. While silver boasts superior conductivity, copper holds the advantage of being more cost-effective. … In high-end electronic applications where performance is paramount, and cost is of less concern, the exceptional conductivity of silver often justifies its use.

Circuit boards are the backbone of electronic devices, and silver plays a significant role in their construction. Silver plating, a process where a thin layer of silver is deposited onto the circuit board’s surface, enhances the board’s conductivity and protects against corrosion. Silver plating ensures that the electrical connections on the circuit board remain stable and free from oxidization, ensuring the long-term reliability of the device. … Silver plating is crucial for high-frequency and high-speed circuit boards, as it minimizes signal losses and reduces electromagnetic interference. These benefits make silver-plated circuit boards the preferred choice in applications like telecommunication networks, satellite systems, and advanced data centers.

Demand-side pressure is reinforced by broader trends in consumer electronics and semiconductor manufacturing. As Boab Metals notes, silver is deeply embedded across modern electronic devices, with limited scope for substitution:

As the most conductive metal on earth, silver is used in semiconductor chips, printed circuit boards, CPUs, and mobile phones.

Demand for consumer technology isn’t slowing down. Since 2020, the world has been facing a shortage of semiconductors. … Almost all devices contain at least a few milligrams of silver, and there’s no viable alternative in electronics.

More granular insight comes from the semiconductor supply chain itself. According to Shanghai Metals Market, silver plays a particularly important role in packaging and other high-density applications where performance requirements are most demanding:

The raw materials for the integrated circuit industry chain are mainly divided into three categories: substrate materials, semiconductor process materials (including photoresist, masks, process chemicals, electronic gases, polishing materials, and target materials), and packaging materials. Among these, silver-containing materials are mainly used in chip packaging materials in the back-end packaging and testing factories (such as substrate interconnection, wire bonding, lead frames, shielding, thermal interface, etc.), with a few target materials in semiconductor process materials at wafer fabs using silver-based targets (the front-end process of physical vapor deposition, PVD).

According to estimates by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS), the global semiconductor market size reached $688 billion in 2024, with US enterprises still occupying a 50% market share.

AI server infrastructure represents a particularly silver-intensive application. A typical AI server cluster, due to its higher power density, more complex cooling system, and higher interconnection requirements, has 2-3 times the silver content of traditional data centers.

AI terminals played a significant role in driving silver processing demand in the electronics industry in 2024, and this supporting factor is expected to continue in 2025 amid substantial demand for AI infrastructure construction. Semiconductor packaging materials account for approximately 18-22% of electronic applications, meaning that the global semiconductor packaging link consumes about 1,200–1,500 mt of silver annually.

In terms of target materials, the total annual consumption of domestic silver-based targets is about 20-30 mt, with the semiconductor packaging link being the core source of precious metal consumption in the integrated circuit sector.

This growing strategic importance has also been recognized at the policy level. As Yahoo! Finance reports, silver is increasingly viewed as a critical input for AI infrastructure:

It’s an excellent conductor, so it’s become a critical element used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers.

Its importance was formally underscored in 2025, when the U.S. Department of the Interior added silver, alongside copper and metallurgical coal, to its list of critical minerals.

To examine this shift in greater detail, shipment-level visibility becomes essential. Without access to bill of lading (B/L) data, it is difficult to determine who the underlying exporters and importers are, how shipments are structured, or whether these flows reflect a small number of large consignments or a broader base of activity. At this stage, further progress is constrained not by interpretation, but by data availability.

InsightThis is just the opening chapter of the story—more insights will emerge as the analysis continues.