The U.S. administration is considering implementing tariffs on imported electronic products based on the value of the chips (CPU and GPU) inside those devices. The goal is to encourage manufacturing to return to the country instead of depending on foreign producers, especially those in Asia.
The problem is that this policy would be very hard to apply in practice. Determining the exact origin of each chip, its type, the destination country, and other administrative details is a big challenge. However, if it goes through, companies like Nvidia, AMD, and even Apple could face extra taxes if their semiconductors come from outside the United States.
Possible Price Scenarios
Analysts have already suggested extreme outcomes. With a 100% tariff on chip content, the reference prices of some products could double in the market:
- A Ryzen 7 9800X3D could rise from $479 to $958.
- A GeForce RTX 5080 could increase from $999 to $1,998.
- The RTX 5090 could jump from $1,999 to almost $4,000.
- The Radeon RX 9070 XT could go from $599 to $1,198.
These figures show how dramatic the situation could become if the measure is applied in its strictest form.
In response to this risk, some manufacturers are already taking precautions. AMD, for example, plans to move part of its Ryzen CPU production to facilities in the U.S. Nvidia is also considering similar strategies to avoid having its products affected by potential tariffs.
I believe Lisa Su said silicon manufacturing is 20% more costly in the USA. And that’s just the silicon part.
Assembly is still going to require and export and re-import stage, with its own tariffs, until cutting edge assembly plants are built (which may or may not happen in sufficient quantity to handle all the US silicon fabrication required to avoid tariffs).
A lot of US right wing Trumpers are perpetually online gamer types (see Wccftech comments) so maybe this will be a bit of an awakening for them.