Trump announces 100% tariff on semiconductors made outside the US in potential blow to domestic businesses

WASHINGTON — President Trump announced plans Wednesday for a 100% tariff on “all chips and semiconductors” — insisting that there would be an orderly economic transition despite potential major impacts on US businesses.

“We’ll be putting a tariff, approximately 100%, on chips and semiconductors,” Trump said at an Oval Office event with Apple CEO Tim Cook, who arrived to announce plans for $600 billion in new investments in the US.

Trump said he would exempt companies that have plans to transition their manufacturing to the US — a hint that the world’s largest chip manufacturer, Taiwan’s TSMC, which is building massive manufacturing plants in Arizona, would be spared.

“If you’re building in the United States of America, there’s no charge, even though you’re building and you’re not producing yet in terms of the big numbers of jobs and all of the things that you’re building. If you’re building there will be no charge,” Trump said.

“So 100% tariff on all chips and semiconductors coming into the United States. But if you’ve made a commitment to build, or if you’re in the process of building, as many are, there is no tariff.”

Cook did not comment on the tariff plan when given an opportunity to address the press.

Trump described the duties as a way to hold accountable companies that backtrack on pledges to open US manufacturing plants.

“If, for some reason, you say you’re building and you don’t build, then we go back and get we added up, it accumulates, and we charge you at a later date, you have to pay, and that’s a guarantee,” Trump said.

“I think the chip companies are all coming back home. They’re all coming back. You know, we started with Intel, and gradually Intel was just taken over the coals, they were taken to the cleaners, frankly, and moved to other places in particular Taiwan, but I think a lot of those companies are coming back, and they’re coming back very rapidly.”

In additional to large “reciprocal” tariffs and a new 10% baseline tariff on most countries, Trump previously applied 50% tariffs on foreign steel, aluminum and copper and a 25% tariff on foreign-made cars in an attempt to boost those American industries.

The president did not specify a start date for the new computer-chip tariffs, and has previewed similar duties for pharmaceutical drugs and lumber.