Semiconductors · Answer

Where does the US import its integrated circuits from?

In 2024, from a $40.39bn import total: Taiwan 28.1%, Malaysia 23.8%, Israel 10.4%, then South Korea 6.0%, Ireland 4.7%, Mexico 3.7%, China 3.6% and Vietnam 3.5%. In 2019 Malaysia alone held 47.1% and Taiwan held 11.2%. The leader changed completely — but the top three still hold 62.3% against 64.8% five years earlier. Concentration moved address rather than falling.

The evidence

Malaysia lost 23.3 points and two countries took nearly all of it.

Taiwan gained 16.9 points and Israel gained 10.0. The next largest gains were Costa Rica +3.0, Ireland +2.2 and Germany +1.1. A buyer who moved off Malaysia to retire concentration risk now holds Taiwan concentration instead.

Chinese share was already small and fell modestly.

China held 4.8% of US integrated-circuit imports in 2019 and 3.6% in 2024, a fall of 1.1 points. The much larger movements over the same period were Malaysian loss and Taiwanese gain, neither of which is a China story.

The answer is different for other semiconductor trade lines.

Discrete devices dispersed into Vietnam, Thailand, India and Cambodia at once, yet the top three ended more concentrated than in 2019. Semiconductor manufacturing machines genuinely diversified — top three fell from 77.9% to 54.2% with no single winner above 6.3 points.

The total grew while the shares moved.

US integrated-circuit imports went from $33.09bn in 2019 to $40.39bn in 2024, up 22%, across 114 partner countries in both years. A partner's share can move because it grew or because another shrank, and share is not volume or capacity.

What would have to be true for this to be wrong

Trade data records a border crossing, not a fab. A chip packaged in one country from a wafer made in another is attributed entirely to the packager, so these shares describe where product enters the US and not where it was manufactured. If your exposure question is about fabrication rather than logistics, this is the wrong instrument and the answer could differ substantially.

UN Comtrade annual US imports, HS 8542, every named partner country, 2019 and 2024, read October 25, 2026 at $0.00 metered. The World aggregate is excluded from the country rows and kept as the denominator; after that filter partner sums reconcile to the world total within 0.00%. Every partner share is published on the study page.
Every row behind this answer is published in the standing study at cultmath.com/research/semiconductors/sourcing-concentration, which is re-run on a schedule and corrected in place, dated.
Published 2026-10-25 by Ipalibo Da-Wariboko, CULT+MATH LLC. Where a number could not be sourced, this page says so and gives none.

This is one of six decisions covered in the semiconductors decision brief — each with the evidence behind it, who owns it, who it is contested with, and what would have to be true for the answer to flip.

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