Meituan Dianping application icons are displayed on an Apple Inc. iPhone in Hong Kong, China, on Friday, March 23, 2018.
Justin Chin | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Asian tech stocks rose Tuesday, following news that U.S. president Donald Trump had paused tariffs on Mexico for a month, while also postponing tariffs on Canadian exports.
Gains were broad-based across tech stocks in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong, and came as their counterparts in the U.S. cut their losses on Monday, following tariff announcements that came late in the day.
Japanese Semiconductor players Advantest and Lasertec led gains among the country’s tech stocks, rising 5% and 4.81%, respectively.
Other Japanese tech companies also rose. Tokyo Electron was up 2.82%, Renesas Electronics gained 2.99% while SoftBank Group advanced 1.53%.
Taiwanese chip company TSMC and manufacturer Foxconn rose 2.8% and
Tech stocks in Asia had come under pressure after Chinese startup DeepSeek launched a free, open-source language model that challenged the supremacy of the U.S.-led AI ecosystem. These stocks subsequently rebounded last week, but the rally mostly got stalled Monday over tariff worries.
South Korean tech stocks were also trading higher on Tuesday, with Samsung Electronics gaining 4.13% and SK Hynix rising marginally, up 0.63%.
The latest gains are a reversal from the weakness seen in both stocks last Friday when the South Korean market re-opened after a four-day break. Shares in Samsung Electronics have also been under pressure after its fourth-quarter profit missed estimates on the back of higher costs.
Chinese tech major Tencent’s shares rose 3.07% in HongKong, while shopping platform Meituan’s stock advanced 5.06%, electronic vehicle maker BYD rose 4.22%, Xpeng was trading 14.46% higher and Li Auto gained 9.35%.
Chinese AI-linked stocks also rose with Alibaba up 3.09% and Kingsoft Cloud rose 7%.
The gains in Chinese companies come even as U.S. tariffs on China kicked in Tuesday. Trump will reportedly speak with President Xi Jinping this week, signaling the intent to avoid a broader tariff war between the world’s top two economies.
Correction: The story has been updated to reflect that the U.S. has paused tariffs on Canada and Mexico.