NYT

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President Trump threatened on Wednesday to impose a 100 percent tariff on foreign semiconductors, in an effort to bring supply chains for electronics back to the United States.

The tariff, which could be unveiled next week, would apply to all countries and companies, unless businesses made a commitment to invest and build in the United States. Mr. Trump pointed to Apple, which announced a $100 billion investment in U.S. manufacturers on Wednesday, as an example of a company that would be spared the levies.

“If you’re building, there will be no charge,” Mr. Trump said. He added that companies that did not fulfill investment promises would be held accountable with fines. “That’s a big statement, and I think the chip companies are all coming back home.”

Should Mr. Trump follow through on his promise, it would be a huge relief for tech companies that had been anxiously anticipating an announcement on semiconductor tariffs. Nvidia, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Micron and other companies could benefit by avoiding huge fees on their businesses because in recent months they have pledged to invest in the United States.

The restrictions on the tariffs would also provide some relief to consumers and businesses, who would be less likely to pay higher prices on foreign electronics and tools. But they have already raised alarms among national security experts who say the exemptions reduce the likelihood that the United States will cut its reliance on high-end chips made in Taiwan, a self-governing island that faces the threat of a Chinese invasion.

Semiconductors are essential in any device with an on-off switch, but they are heavily produced in Asia. After a shortage of chips during the pandemic, U.S. officials have tried to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign semiconductors, and particularly factories in Taiwan.

In 2024, the Biden administration signed contracts to award tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to semiconductor companies to build new factories in the United States, including in New York, Arizona and Texas.

But Mr. Trump has criticized those investments as wasteful, saying all the industry needed to encourage it to move to the United States were large tariffs. To encourage the production of semiconductors in the United States, he has favored replacing the subsidies with tariffs.

Mr. Trump started an inquiry into semiconductor production this year under a national security law known as Section 232, which he has used to apply tariffs to imported steel, aluminum, copper products and cars. The law allows the president to impose tariffs on foreign products in the interest of national security.

The administration is wrapping up that inquiry and expected to announce its tariff proposal this month.

  • NuraShiny [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    46·
    3 days ago

    The press could just do these articles at random and no one would realize they made it up.

    President threatens D200 tariff on…

    rolls on Random D10000 table table of goods

    Coming from…

    Throws dart at map of the world

    “The president Threatens 97% tariff on carrots coming from Indonesia!”

  • regul [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    241·
    3 days ago

    I’ll say that I don’t hate the change from massive grants to huge multi-nationals towards punishing tariffs if they don’t increase domestic capacity if it works.

    As far as I can tell, most of the huge grants Biden gave to Intel (which I am most familiar with) didn’t result in any movement towards building domestic manufacturing, and in fact they’ve just done a ton of layoffs.

    • Llituro [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      41·
      3 days ago

      if it works

      even if we were talking about cars it wouldn’t work. tariffs are used to protect domestic capital that already exists. all of these broad tariffs all at once mean that it would be almost impossible to even get industrial capital back into this country. at the most simple level, where are all these factories supposed to get all their steel. this policy is completely nonsensical relative to increasing domestic capacity. this is just an exceedingly regressive tax on everyone that isn’t a finance capitalist.

    • daniyeg [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      19·
      3 days ago

      the way trump is doing it is basically extorting other people by saying im willing to shoot myself just to kill your business. now submit to me or i will make sure both of us will suffer and you don’t wanna suffer do you? it’s caveman shit designed to make him look like a tough mucho man.

      in the short term it might work but in the long term either people hope to weather it out to a democrat administration to repeal all this nonsense (which won’t happen because democrats are wankers but some people still believe that) or they will look to do their business in other markets. business confidence was one of those things that the “american democracy” was supposed to be good at protecting, but that’s down the toilet i suppose.

      • decaptcha [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        4·
        2 days ago

        For real, I mean pointing out Republican hypocrisy can be a fraught exercise, since they do and say so little in good faith, but I remember well the term “regulatory certainty” being thrown around as justification for stripping away all kinds of environmental protections at the federal and state levels

      • regul [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        91·
        3 days ago

        Are they not easy to make or is it just not easy to develop the process? Are the fabs not easily duplicated once they’ve been designed?

        • bobs_guns@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          16·
          3 days ago

          It’s not easy to figure out the process and it’s also not easy to spin up a fab. It’s one of the most difficult manufacturing processes that exists, period

        • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          12·
          3 days ago

          The fabs, the machines that makes parts for fabs, the machines that make the machines that make the parts for fabs are extremely specialized

        • CommunistBear [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          16·
          3 days ago

          To an extent yes, they don’t need to reinvent the wheel. But it will still take years to build the factories. And train the necessary and highly skilled staff. And build up the necessary secondary industries. And likely a ton of other stuff that I haven’t thought about.

        • SchillMenaker [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          3·
          2 days ago

          Let’s put it this way, the first viable yields for the most advanced processes start off in the 20-something percent range and the goal is usually to push that to 70+ percent. That means that, after months of alchemy on a stack of silicon wafers, maybe a fifth of the dies on them will even work. All of that alchemy requires billions of dollars of equipment and vast technical knowledge to operate, with the equipment and knowledge constantly evolving to the point where if you don’t figure it out within a window of a year or so then all of your efforts are wasted.

          The craziest thing is that process is only part of the battle, chip architecture is also super important and if a designer improves the architecture efficiency it can overcome the difference in process node size. So somebody else needs to spend a fuckton of time and money developing a next generation architecture on a predicted node size, then you need to be ready to produce it once they’re ready to roll out their product and missing that boat absolutely kills you.

          The barrier to entry is staggering and at this point likely requires large scale state support and direction to overcome.