AI companies cannot find out if Trump’s tariff intends to decide – and the fact that no one has a clear answer is sending them, and in general the technology industry, in a spiral of confusion.
Markets are in disarray. NVIDIA fell by 7.59%, TSMC fell by 7.22%. In San Francisco, sources tell us that this is not a gigantic deal. But in DC people panic. The basic question is whether the GPU – graphics processing units, which are crucial for AI computers and other industries – are released from Donald Trump’s wide tariffs, and the answer is surprisingly ambiguous.
In AI laboratories, scientists expect their industry to receive a tariff exemption. “I fully expect that this will be a situation in which Trump again gives companies that he considers important/on its side/regardless of the Hall Pass,” like the President from Apple during the first term, one source in the main AI laboratory said The Verge.
However, in Washington, no one seems to be sure what the current state of the game is. The Trump administration has determined the exception for semiconductor chips in the heart of the GPU, but for now complete electronic products containing systems will apparently be subject to tariffs. Companies that need GPU for machine learning, deep learning, real -time processing and many others require not only a chip, but a whole machine built around it. “I believe that most GPU AI is imported not as fries, but as servers, mainly from Taiwan,” Chris Miller, a professor at the University of Tufts and the author Chip War: The Fight for the most vital technology in the world, he said The Verge In e -Mail. “Thus, they will probably face the general Taiwan tariff foot” 32%, currently planned on April 9.
Usually government agencies can explain what is happening. But asked for clarity, a public affairs official in Nist, an agency in the department of trade supervising the law on chips – $ 50 billion in construction production facilities for American soil – directed The Verge to the White House. The White House did not immediately ask the request for comment. A USA commercial representative, the agency responsible for creating and implementing the president’s tariff strategy.
While the crowd of SF is stubborn in the scope of layoffs, technological lobbyists in Washington are closer to chaos, which is the second administration of Trump, and are very well familiar with the capricia of the president’s and vindictive nature, especially against the technology industry. The fact that the tariffs are so vague and seem accidentally dropped together – so random that there is a reasonable argument that they were generated by AI – only adds their worries. “Everyone is asking for clarity,” said one of the lobbyists in a immense technology company The Verge. “So far people say that they think everything is fine, but they are not sure yet.” This is not a vote of confidence in the GPU tariff layout.
The GPU confusion waves outside the AI industry, hitting immense technology companies that store thousands of these devices in the data center throughout the country. Amazon, Google and Microsoft rely on access to the GPU to support their architecture in the cloud of many billion dollars. Apparently, the market is not convinced that their most vital will survive these tariffs: the so -called “wonderful seven”, including three companies above, has lost over $ 1 trillion on the market Capitalization from the announcement of tariffs. (Spokespeopera Google and Microsoft refused to comment on this story.)
The AI industry has a reason to think that Trump can be favored in particular. Just a few months ago, Altman himself and other technical directors of Opeli stood in the White House together with the president to announce Stargate, a project of data infrastructure worth $ 500 billion devoted to satisfying Altman’s demands regarding “more calculations”. The current unclear GPU condition in combination with the unpredictability of Trump tariffs can, however, shake their confidence – or at least mean that they have to renew Curry Trump’s attempts.
“If the tariffs remain unchanged, we should prepare for a significant increase in the price of electronics.”
GPU Juggernaut Nvidia apparently began to move production to the USA, which, as she hopes, will facilitate in isolation from tariffs. Reuters For example, in December in December last year he was finalized plans to produce his GPU Blackwell AI chip at the Arizona factory at TSMC, which aims to start the production of tokens this year. NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Huang, referred to this partnership in Last investor questions and answers: “We produce in so many different places. We can move things around. The tariffs will have little impact for us.
The same cannot be said about the computing AI laboratories, suppliers of Hyerscale clouds, and even average computers builders-which everyone can pay much more for the GPU. “None of this is impossible, but an attempt to produce each segment of electronic supply chains in the country will cause a stunning raise in costs, especially in a compact period, given that some possibilities simply do not exist in the country,” said Miller. This does not even include tariffs for raw materials needed to build these machines and plants or any retaliation: for example, on Friday, China has announced a new set of export limitations of rare land minerals, which are crucial for the production of electronics. The US is currently importing 90 percent of their rare lands from China.
“If the tariffs remain unchanged,” added Miller, “we should prepare for a significant raise in the price of electronics.”
But ultimately, loyalty to Trump may be more important than reference to reason. The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, has committed to loyalty to the new administration, which is important for Anthropic, because it allows its calculations through Amazon. However, these offers are fragile. A single critical story in a bareless paper The Washington Post For example, Amazon (and by an association, anthropic) may lose his tariff. Anthropic also allows you to take part in its calculations via Google; Together with Bezos, the general director of Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, joined the group of billionaires of technology behind Trump during his inauguration.
There are other factors that could indirectly cause problems for these companies – such as the US pushed into a recession that will destroy the technological economy. “The effects of tariffs in the second row may still be bad”, added the source of the AI laboratory.
It seemed that the market mobilized technology leaders. A group of general directors and finance leaders is on their way to the private center of Trump, MAR-A-Lago, According to To the journalist Kara Swisher. It seems that the goal is to find some sense in these tariffs – and perhaps some dismissals.