Trump Still Eyeing Tariffs on Chips, Despite TSMC Investment

President Trump still plans to tariff foreign-made semiconductors, despite TSMC’s pledge to invest $100 billion in three new US chip fabs.

At a White House event on Monday, Trump said “down the road” he’ll be revealing tariffs on both lumber and chips. “We’re going to get all those chip companies coming back. They’re already coming back without even doing it,” he said.

The president didn’t elaborate, but his statement suggests it will be hard for the tech industry to avoid chip-focused tariffs, even as TSMC, Nvidia, and Apple are promising to spend hundreds of billions on chip and tech manufacturing in the country.

“I think we can easily see ourselves manufacturing several hundred billion of it here in the US,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told The Financial Times last week. 

Despite the big investments, it can take years for a company to build electronics factories in the US. So, chip tariffs may result in cost increases in the short-term, especially if they ensnare TSMC, which builds processors for Apple, AMD, Nvidia, and even Intel. Last month, Trump warned his tariffs on semiconductors could start at 25% and increase through the year.  

In the meantime, the White House is preparing to issue “reciprocal” tariffs on foreign-made goods on April 2. The goal is to match the tariffs other countries impose on the US, which could further inflame the White House’s trade war. However, on Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration plans on narrowing the scope of the reciprocal tariffs, seemingly postponing the semiconductor-focused levies to a later date.

About Michael Kan

Senior Reporter

I’ve been working as a journalist for over 15 years—I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017.

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