New 1:1 Rule for Imports and Exports Could Hit US Chipmakers with 100% Tariffs

Semiconductor companies will be required to produce domestically an amount of chips equal to what their customers import into the US, with those entities that fail to maintain this 1:1 ratio facing hefty import tariffs of up to 100%, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.

According to the draft of the new tariff plan cited in the report, chipmakers would need to match every single imported chip with one made in the United States to avoid penalties.

In terms of gaming hardware, this upcoming and yet-to-be-detailed new tariff plan has already been affecting the market, as was reported by Gaming.News earlier this month.

Major US chipmakers include Nvidia (a fabless leader in gaming GPUs and AI accelerators), Intel (gaming CPUs and other processors), AMD (PC CPUs and GPUs), Micron Technology (DRAM and NAND chips for RAM and SSDs), Western Digital/SanDisk (storage devices), and Qualcomm (mobile and PC SoCs), while the dominant supplier of memory chips to the US market is the South Korean company Samsung.

Notably, some chipmakers have already raised prices for their products due to the risk of tariffs.