At the White House on September 4, President Trump said that his administration will “very shortly” impose a “fairly substantial” tariff on imported semiconductors from companies that are not making chips in the United States, adding that firms investing in domestic production would be spared from the levy.
“I’ve discussed it with the people here, chips and semiconductors, and we’ll be putting tariffs on companies that aren’t coming in,” Trump said.
“We’ll be putting a tariff very shortly. You probably are hearing we’ll be putting a fairly substantial tariff, or not that high, but a fairly substantial tariff.”
Export controls tighten
The remarks capped an evening of dealmaking theater involving major tech CEOs and large investment pledges from Silicon Valley. Apple has publicly raised its US commitment to $600 billion, a figure the company touted in August and appears to have placed the iPhone maker on the right side of the incoming policy, with Trump singling out Apple as being “in pretty good shape.” Precise rates and timings for the tariffs were not announced.
The fresh tariff threats land as Washington is already tightening export controls around China. On August 29, the Commerce Department revoked authorizations from 2022 that had allowed Samsung and SK hynix to obtain U.S. chipmaking equipment for their China fabs, replacing fast-track processes with a return to case-by-case licensing. The Commerce Department said that the US plans to grant license applications to allow the companies to maintain their existing facilities in China, but not to upgrade technology or expand capacity.
A few days later, TSMC said the US government had also decided to pull its ‘Validated End User’ (VEU) fast-track status for shipping American tools to its Nanjing site by the end of the year. After December 31, the world’s largest contract chipmaker will need licenses for those exports, a shift that will add paperwork and uncertainty to any upgrades at the Chinese plant.
More tariff limbo
Trump’s actions leave yet more unanswered questions for hardware fans. How broad will the tariff coverage be? Will there be a carve-out for firms with U.S. fabs preparing to ramp up? And what happens while domestic capacity remains a fraction of offshore output? Both AMD and Nvidia lean heavily on TSMC’s production today, and even as domestic capacity comes online, near-term supply is still tied to Asia.
Price pressure could arrive quickly if the White House moves to implement these tariffs. An April analysis prepared for the Consumer Technology Association, estimated that tariffs could lift retail prices by roughly a third for laptops and tablets, with monitors rising by a similar amount, and game consoles hit hardest. The study projects a $123 billion annual hit to consumer purchasing power if the costs flow through to retail.
For now, we’re waiting on an official announcement and the subsequent fine print.
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