TSMC Targeted – Trump threatens 25-100% Tariffs on Taiwanese computer chips

US President Donald Trump aims to upend the entire PC market with Taiwan/TSMC-focused Tariffs

At a House Republican Conference, US President Donald Trump threatened to upend the PC market by targeting Taiwan with Tariffs on PC chips. If implemented, these tariffs would have a dramatic impact on TSMC, the company behind most of the world’s leading-edge silicon. Trump has threatened 25% to 100% tariffs on Taiwan-made chips, hoping to force production to move to the US.

Currently, TSMC produces the chips for AMD, Apple, Broadcomm, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Intel, and other leading PC companies. Trump’s tariffs would make Taiwan-made silicon less competitive, forcing PC companies to explore other options. TSMC has a fan in Arizona, though this site alone is not enough to satisfy all demand for TSMC-made computer chips. Beyond that, this site does not manufacture chips using TSMC’s most advanced lithography technologies.

What’s Trump’s plan?

Donald Trump wants semiconductor manufacturing to move to the US. He wants to force this by making chip production in Taiwan prohibitively expensive through tariffs. To avoid these tariffs, manufacturers must spend billions to create US-based manufacturing sites.

Once these tariffs are implemented, PC components using Taiwan-made chips will become more expensive. This will impact the price of AMD CPUs, some Intel CPUs, Nvidia GPUs, and all Apple Silicon devices. Until manufacturing moves to the US (or other nations without these tariffs), PC hardware will become incredibly expensive in the US.

Another perf of Trump’s Tariffs would be that US-based semiconductor manufacturers, like Intel, would see their lithography technologies become much more competitive. This could gain Intel a wealth of Foundry customers, as tariffs will not impact US-made chips.

In the very near future, we are going to be placing tariffs on foreign production of computer chips, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals to return production of these essential goods to the United States,

They left us and went to Taiwan; we want them to come back. We do not want to give them billions of dollars like this ridiculous program that Biden has given everybody billions of dollars. They already have billions of dollars. […] They did not need money. They needed an incentive. And the incentive is going to be they [do not want to] pay a 25%, 50% or even a 100% tax.

– US President Donald Trump (via Tom’s Hardware/C-Span)

(TSMC has a US-based Fab in Arizona)

Will Trump’s anti-TSMC/Taiwan plan succeed?

Semiconductor fabs are expensive to build and cannot be built quickly. While the threat of tariffs may bring some semiconductor manufacturing to the US, the immediate consequences of these tariffs would deal a heavy blow to the US PC market. PCs with Taiwan-made chips would immediately become more expensive, as consumers would ultimately pay for the cost of Trump’s tariffs.

Trump’s Taiwan chip tariffs would increase the cost of Nvidia GPUs, AMD CPUs, Apple Silicon devices, and even some Intel products. That could have a huge impact on the profitability of the US tech sector and potentially damage the US economy. Will Trump’s aggressive Tariffs be good or bad for the US? Only time will tell.

You can join the discussion on Donald Trump’s planned tariffs on Taiwanese computer chips on the OC3D Forums.

Mark Campbell

Mark Campbell

A Northern Irish father, husband, and techie that works to turn tea and coffee into articles when he isn’t painting his extensive minis collection or using things to make other things.

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