Major Asian economies are profiting from growing global demand for AI as their manufacturing sectors build the high-end equipment needed for a worldwide data center boom, economists said.
Surging exports are set to drive GDP growth in Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam, while Seoul’s and Taipei’s burgeoning tax receipts — thanks to fast-rising corporate profits — are driving government spending, Goldman Sachs economists noted. Japan, too, is benefitting further up the supply chain by making semiconductor manufacturing equipment for many of these Asian economies, Barclays said.
Not everyone is doing as well, however: Populist policies in Indonesia, AI’s threat to outsourcing jobs in the Philippines, and demographic decline in Thailand have left those Southeast Asian nations particularly vulnerable.