U.S. President Donald Trump says new tariffs on semiconductors will be unveiled as early as next week.
In an interview with CNBC, Trump said semiconductors and chips are a “separate category” from other goods and will be hit with their own levies accordingly, “within the next week or so.” As is the case with all of the other tariffed goods, he says this is being done to drive production to the U.S.
That’s easier said than done, however. The majority of these components, which are used in everything from phones and cars to video game consoles and AI, are produced in Taiwan. These production chains are the source of chips for giants like Nvidia, Qualcomm and Apple, and it would be incredibly costly and infeasible to fully move to the U.S. For instance, analysts have estimated that such a pivot would result in Apple having to spend many billions and increase the cost of the iPhone by at least a couple thousand dollars.
Trump’s comments about semiconductors come after he signed an executive order to impose new duties on imports from various countries, including a 20 per cent levy on Taiwanese goods.
Canada, meanwhile, had an August 1 deadline to negotiate a new trade deal with the U.S., resulting in a 35 per cent duty on Canadian goods not covered by the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). The White House repeated the claim that this was due to Canada’s “failure to cooperate” regarding fentanyl imports into the U.S., despite the fact that it’s consistently been demonstrated that Canada is only responsible for a minuscule amount — one-tenth of a percent, per U.S. Customs and Border Patrol data — of this.
Dominic LeBlanc, Canada’s trade minister, said Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to resume talks with Trump “over the next number of days.”
Image credit: Shutterstock
Source: CNBC
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