Silicon Valley breathed a sigh of relief on Wednesday knowing that President Donald Trump Bonanza tariff Including an exemption for semiconductors, at least now, will not be subject to higher import tasks. But only three days later, some US technology companies can see that the gap actually creates more problems than solving. After the tariff was announced, the White House Publish a list Among the products that it says is not affected and it does not include many types of goods related to the chip.
That means that only a few US manufacturers will be able to continue finding supply without having to take into account the higher import costs. Most of the semicondures leading to the US are currently being packed into products that are not exempted, such as graphic processing units (GPUs) and servers for training. Artificial intelligence model. And the production equipment that domestic companies used to produce chips in the US is not forgiven.
If you are a large chip manufacturer, who is investing quite large in the United States, one hundred billion dollars will buy you much less in the next few years compared to the past few years, Martin Chorzempa, a senior member of the Peterson International Economic Institute.
The US Department of Commerce did not respond to a comment request.
Stacy Rasgon, a premium analyst, including semiconductors at Bernstein Research, said the narrow exception for the chip will make very little negative effects on the industry. Given that most of the semicondures leading to the US border are packed into servers, smartphones and other products, the tax rate for something in the football field of the 40 % blend of taxes for those tools, Mr. Ras Rasgon said, mentioning the overall import tax rate applied.
Rasgon noted that the semiconductor industry depends deeply on other imports and the overall health of the US economy, because the components it produces in many types of consumer products, from cars to refrigerators. They said they were the one who interacted with the macro, he said.
In order to determine the goods applied by tariffs, the Trump administration has relied on a complex current system called a harmonious tax schedule (HTS), organizing millions of different products sold on the US market into different types corresponding to different import tax rates. The White House document only lists a narrow HTS code group in the field of semiconductor that speaks exempt from the new tax rate.
GPU, for example, is often encrypted as 8473.30 or 8542.31 in the HTS system, Nancy Wei, a supply chain analyst at the Eurasia Group consulting company. But Trump's abandonment applies only to GPUs more advanced in the following 8542.31 category. It also does not include other codes for relevant computing hardware types. NVIDIA's DGX Systems, a built -in Server with an integrated GPU designed for AI computing tasks, is encrypted as 8471.50, according to Company websiteIt means it may not be exempted from tax.
The line between differences can sometimes be blurred. In 2020, for example, an importer of two GPU NVIDIA models asked the US government to clarify the category they consider belonging to. After reviewing the issue, customs and defending the US border Determine that Two GPUs of type 8473.30, are not exempt from taxes.