U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at an event with Apple CEO Tim Cook in Washington, D.C. on August 6, 2025.
Win McNamee | Getty Images
After months of speculation, U.S. President Donald Trump leaked his semiconductor tariff plan, but his latest threat could raise more questions than answers.
Trump said on Wednesday that he would impose 100% tariffs on imports of semiconductors and chips, but not for company This is “building in the United States”.
As a representative of semiconductors More than $600 billion in the industry At the heart of the modern digital economy, any potential tariffs have a lot of weight.
However, experts say the president has not provided key details about the policy, which will ultimately determine its full impact and goals.
“It’s too early to determine the impact of tariffs on the semiconductor space,” Ray Wang, research director for semiconductors, supply chains and emerging technologies at Futurum Group, told CNBC.
“The final rule may still be drafted, and the technical details are not clear at this point.”
Hello, big players, have the small players cooked?
One of the biggest questions for chip participants and investors is how much manufacturing companies need to commit to qualifying for tax exemptions.
The United States has been onshore its semiconductor supply chain for many years. The world’s largest semiconductor company since 2020 TSMC Samsung has pledged hundreds of billions of dollars to build in the United States
This could mean that most major chip makers have been exempted, said James Sullivan, managing director and head of Asia Pacific equity research at JP Morgan on Thursday.
If this is the case, the policy could generate “continue to consolidate the market share of the largest CAP players in the field,” Sullivan said.
Indeed, Asian chip grand slams, which have heavily invested in the U.S., and Samsung stocks were traded Thursday morning after Trump announced the news. Earlier this year, TSMC Announce It will expand its investment in the United States to $165 billion.
South Korea’s Samsung and SK Hynix (also already invested in the U.S.) are also trading, and South Korea’s trade envoy reportedly said on the broadcast that the duo would be exempt from 100% tariffs.
What are exempted?
Apart from the issue of exemptions, many other aspects of potential tariffs are not yet clear.
Speaking on CNBC’s “Squawk Asia” on Thursday, Bernstein’s senior U.S. semiconductor analyst Stacy Rasgon pointed out that most semiconductors entering the United States have entered consumer goods such as smartphones, PCs and cars.
For example, in 2024, the United States imported $46.3 billion in semiconductors, with only about 1% of the United States importing Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
Rasgon said tariffs on these imports may be manageable, but wider tariffs will be difficult to deal with.
Lasgon asked: “We don’t know about the (Trump’s) comments about tariffs. Is this just the original semiconductor? Will there be taxes on end devices?
Chaos and problems surrounding semiconductor tariffs have caught the forefront after the U.S. Department of Commerce began National Security Investigation Semiconductor imports in April Exemption Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs.
In theory, the Trump administration’s vague language, while not cited in the president’s latest statement, could be used to apply widely to a huge part of the electronic supply chain. It is also unclear that semiconductor materials and manufacturing equipment used to make chips will be subject to tariffs.
Complex supply chains
The complex and interdependent nature of semiconductor supply chains may also complicate potential tariff strategies.
Lasgon took the example of American chip designer Qualcomm and sent its design to Taiwan-made TSMCs and then imported them to the United States.
“Does this mean those (chip imports) are not subject to expropriation because they are made on TSMCs, which are being built in the US? … I don’t know. Hope this is what I hope.”
Another major semiconductor buyer in the United States is cloud service provider Amazon Network services and Googlewhich is crucial to powering Washington’s AI initiatives.
According to the recent Report From ITIF, semiconductors contribute $7 trillion in global economic activity every year by supporting a series of downstream applications including AI and “big data”.
Potential signs of US companies trying to transfer their chip supply chains to the US, apple CEO Tim Cook announced Wednesday at the White House that he would provide chips to production plants in Texas.
The company also announced an additional $100 billion investment in the U.S., increasing its total commitment to investing in the country to $600 billion over the next four years.
