Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

Webinar News NetworkWebinar News Network

Latest News

Trump says he’ll put tariffs on imported chips ‘in the near future’

Digital collage of products that might be affected by tariffs.
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Without going into detail about what might happen to the $52 billion in subsidies from the CHIPS Act under his administration, Donald Trump said tariffs on foreign computer chips, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals are coming “in the near future.” He also namechecked DeepSeek’s AI releases, saying, “…coming up with a faster method of AI and less expensive, that’s good. I view that as a positive if it is fact and it is true, and nobody knows, but I view that as a positive.”

In the speech at the House GOP Issues Conference held at the Trump National Doral Resort in Miami Monday afternoon, he said that to return the production of these goods to the US, “we don’t want to give them billions of dollars like this ridiculous program Biden has.” Instead the incentive for manufacturers will be “they will not want to pay a tax.”

This is despite the outcome of the trade war with China during his first administration that expanded China’s trade surplus with the US between 2018, when the tariffs began, and 2021. A CTA report from last year cited by TechCrunch said Trump’s proposed tariffs could increase prices on laptops and tablets by 46 percent, game consoles by 40 percent, and smartphones by 26 percent.

He also said that “we will have more plants built in the next short period of time than ever before because the incentive will be there,” however it’s unclear how many of those will be like The Stargate Project’s first datacenter in Texas, which was in the works well before the start of his administration. Last fall, the Commerce Department said that by then, it had “announced over $30 billion in proposed CHIPS private sector investments spanning 23 projects in 15 states” with 16 new manufacturing facilities in the works.

He also said of DeepSeek that “instead of spending billions you will spend less and hopefully come up with the same solution,” even as OpenAI, Softbank & co. say they’re preparing to spend $500 billion on AI datacenters.

You May Also Like

Editor's Pick

So far, this has been a fairly entertaining start to the new year! The S&P 500 started off with a bounce to 6050, pushed briefly...

Editor's Pick

When I look back at leading industry groups for the past day, week, month, 3-month, 6-month, and 1-year periods, only one industry group has...

Latest News

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images TikTok and CapCut are going dark in the US now that the ban-or-divest law passed last...

Editor's Pick

In this video, Mary Ellen unpacks the week after the news drop roiled markets; coupled with major earnings reports, it’s been a rough week....