cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/53880308
Summary
Trump plans to impose tariffs of up to 100% on semiconductors manufactured in Taiwan, aiming to push U.S. tech companies like Apple, Nvidia, and AMD to produce chips domestically.
The tariffs target Taiwan’s TSMC, a key supplier, despite its partial U.S. production in Arizona.
Trump criticized Biden’s CHIPS Act for funding companies like Intel and proposed tariffs as an alternative incentive.
Experts warn the move could raise prices for electronics as most TSMC chips are assembled in Asia before export to the U.S.
Biden, in last few weeks, made a very aggressive anti-Nvidia move in limiting AI processing sales severely to all but US’s very closest allies. Trump has antagonized most of these allies already. But datacenter costs in US going up very significantly from these new tariffs, in addition to forcing extremely expensive extortionist energy on America, is pretty sure to make datacenters outside of US far more profitable, and an extreme likelihood of a black market to both get chips to tier 2 and tier 3 nations, as well as to US consumers.