The Silicon Valley breathed a sigh of relief on Wednesday, when she learned that the tariff bonanza of President Donald Trump covered the exemption for semiconductors, which at least not yet subject to higher import duties. But only three days later some American technology companies can say that the gap actually causes more problems than it solves. After the announcement of the White House tariffs He published a list Among the products that he thinks they have no influence and does not cover many types of goods related to the chip.
This means that only a miniature number of American manufacturers will be able to continue to obtain systems without having to take into account higher import costs. The expansive majority of semiconductors that currently appear in the USA are already packed in products that are not released, such as graphics processing units (GPU) and servers for training artificial intelligence models. And the production equipment, from which home companies operate for the production of tokens in the USA, was also not saved.
“If you are the main producer of chips who makes a significant investment in the USA, one hundred billion dollars will buy you much less in the next few years,” says Martin Chorzępa, an older employee of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
The US Trade Department did not answer the request for comment.
Stacy Rasgon, a senior analyst covering semiconductors in Bernstein Research, claims that a narrow exception for systems will do little to exterminate a wider negative impact on the industry. Considering that most semiconductors reach the borders of the US packed on servers, smartphones and other products, the tariffs are “something on the pitch of 40 percent mixed tariff for these things,” says Rasgon, referring to the overall import rate used.
Rasgon notes that the semiconductor industry is deeply dependent on other imports and the overall health of the American economy, because the folded ones, which are produced in so many types of consumer products, from cars to the fridge. “They are exposed to macro,” he says.
To determine what goods the tariff is used to, Trump’s administration was based on a elaborate existing system called a harmonized tariff schedule (HTS), which organizes millions of different products sold on the American market to numerical categories that correspond to different import rates. The White House document contains only a narrow group of HTS codes in the semiconductor field, which according to him is released from up-to-date tariffs.
For example, GPUs are usually coded as 8473.30 or 8542.31 in the HTS system, says Nancy Wei, supply chain analyst at the Eurasia Group consulting company. But Trump’s release only applies to more advanced GPU in the second category 8542.31. It also does not include other codes of related types of computing equipment. NVIDIA DGX Systems, a previously configured server with a built -in graphic processor designed for AI computer tasks, is coded as 8471.50, in accordance with company websiteWhich means that this is probably not released from tariffs.
The border between these distinctions can sometimes be blurred. For example, in 2020, the importer of two GPU models NVIDIA asked the American authorities to explain in what category he considers them. After seeing the case, American customs and protecting borders He determined it Two GPUs belong to the category 8473.30, which is also not released from tariffs.