President says tech companies can avoid the levy by investing in US manufacturing
Michael Acton in San Francisco, Tim Bradshaw in London and Aime Williams, James Politi and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
Published yesterday
Updated14:17
Donald Trump has vowed to impose a 100 per cent tariff on semiconductor imports, but said companies such as Apple that invested in the US could avoid the new levies.
The US president unveiled his new plan to tax chip imports at a meeting in the Oval Office on Wednesday with Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook, who said his tech company would raise its planned US investments in the coming years by $100bn.
Trump said: “We’ll be putting a tariff on approximately 100 per cent on chips and semiconductors, but if you are building in the United States of America there’s no charge.”
The carve-outs would boost artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia and its key supplier, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which have pledged to spend billions of dollars building up their US production capacity.
Taiwan’ s chief economic planner downplayed the potential impact of any tariff, saying that TSMC’s investments in US capacity would exempt the world’s largest chipmaker from any levies.
“So far, for TSMC this is good news,” Liu Jing-chin, minister in charge of the National Development Council, told lawmakers in Taipei, adding that the overall impact for Taiwan was “not as big as imagined”.
www.ft.com
Michael Acton in San Francisco, Tim Bradshaw in London and Aime Williams, James Politi and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
Published yesterday
Updated14:17
Donald Trump has vowed to impose a 100 per cent tariff on semiconductor imports, but said companies such as Apple that invested in the US could avoid the new levies.
The US president unveiled his new plan to tax chip imports at a meeting in the Oval Office on Wednesday with Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook, who said his tech company would raise its planned US investments in the coming years by $100bn.
Trump said: “We’ll be putting a tariff on approximately 100 per cent on chips and semiconductors, but if you are building in the United States of America there’s no charge.”
The carve-outs would boost artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia and its key supplier, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which have pledged to spend billions of dollars building up their US production capacity.
Taiwan’ s chief economic planner downplayed the potential impact of any tariff, saying that TSMC’s investments in US capacity would exempt the world’s largest chipmaker from any levies.
“So far, for TSMC this is good news,” Liu Jing-chin, minister in charge of the National Development Council, told lawmakers in Taipei, adding that the overall impact for Taiwan was “not as big as imagined”.
Donald Trump threatens 100% tariff on chips with carve-out for Apple
President says tech companies can avoid the levy by investing in US manufacturing
www.ft.com
