President Trump says U.S. to levy 100% tariff on imported chips; firms with U.S. manufacturing, commitments exempt

President Donald Trump holds a signed executive order on tariffs, in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, D.C., April 2, 2025.
President Donald Trump announced a 100% tariff on semiconductor imports, with an exemption for companies manufacturing in the U.S. or those committed to doing so. The policy, aimed at boosting domestic manufacturing, was revealed alongside Apple’s commitment to invest an additional $100 billion in the U.S. market.
Reuters:
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For companies like Apple, which have committed to build in the United States, “there will be no charge,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.
He warned, however, that companies should not try to wrangle out of pledges to build U.S. factories. “If, for some reason, you say you’re building and you don’t build, then we go back and we add it up, it accumulates, and we charge you at a later date, you have to pay, and that’s a guarantee,” Trump added.
Taiwanese chip contract manufacturer TSMC is expected to be relatively unscathed as it has U.S. factories, so key customers such as Nvidia are unlikely to face increased tariff costs for U.S-made chips.
Nvidia, which makes cutting-edge AI graphics processing units, also plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S. TSMC did not immediately reply to a request for comment, and an Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment.
“There’s so much serious investment in the United States in chip production that much of the sector will be exempt,” said Martin Chorzempa, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
He added that chips made by China’s SMIC or Huawei are unlikely to be exempt, but noted that chips from these companies entering the U.S. market were mostly incorporated into devices assembled in China.
“If these tariffs were applied without a component tariff, it might not make much difference,” he said.
The EU has said it agreed to a single 15% tariff rate for the vast majority of EU exports, including cars, chips and pharmaceuticals. Japan has said that the U.S. agreed not to give it a worse tariff rate than other countries on chips.

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MacDailyNews Take: Its simple: Invest in American manufacturing and you’ll avoid the 100% tariff on semiconductor imports.
Expect specific exemptions from U.S. import tariffs for important Apple products. – MacDailyNews, February 2, 2025

If only we had seen how President Trump’s trade policies played out globally and how the markets reacted and responded previously (dripping sarcasm).
Anyone who thinks Apple won’t get significant, meaningful U.S. import tariff exemptions hasn’t been paying attention. Profit from the panic of the uninformed and misinformed. – MacDailyNews, March 19, 2025

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[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
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