Donald Trump's global tariff regime endangers its ambitions to encourage the production of domestic fleas while hampering the American objectives to dominate the race to develop artificial intelligence in the world.
The initiates of the industry, including technology leaders, supply chain experts and analysts, said that the US president's escalation is likely to hinder the expansion of American computer power. Indeed
The concern of the technological sector is that the effort to force a greater alliance of the manufacture of fleas and electronics will have the involuntary effect of retaining Openai, Google and Microsoft who seek to beat homologists in China in the construction of an advanced AI.
“The economic uncertainty induced by Trump's prices could become the greatest obstacle to American supremacy of AI,” said Sravan Kundojjala of Semalalyysse Consultant.
Large technological groups, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta, are committed to spending $ 300 billion on the computer infrastructure that underlies in only 2025.
Other projects, such as a Commitment of $ 100 billion By Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to increase the manufacturing capacity of fleas in the United States, will help support these ambitions
Industry figures have warned that these efforts are faced with uncertainty and disturbances, because the prices have reached the complex global supply chains which serve large IA IT projects.
“I am much more worried about the impact on a single component in a given data center which can be delayed now because some suppliers (abroad) make a decision concerning their business,” said a person involved in the development of StargateThe US $ 500 billion data center project is led by Openai, SoftBank and Oracle.
“These are fairly complex constructions (which can be) delayed due to a change for fans.”
Semiconductors and equipment, materials and related components have been exempt from the American president now interrupted The “reciprocal” prices have announced dozens of American business partners.
But analysts said that the tariff regime that remains, including 145% tasks on Chinese goods, would always increase the cost of building and financing manufacturing factories and AI data centers in the United States.
Altana, a research group that maps world supply chains, said Chinese prices alone mean developers in the American data center are faced with an increase in annual costs of more than $ 11 billion.
The United States announced this week that it was investigating the implications of national security importing semiconductors and bands of equipment, materials and related components because it seeks to force companies to move the production of advanced equipment linked to AI in the United States.
The survey, known as article 232 which could take up to 270 days, could lead to even more expensive requests on the industry. Trump has already invoked the powers of article 232 to impose prices of 25% on the sectors of steel, aluminum and car.
“No one launches” from Hamed “,” wrote Trump in an article on social networks on Sunday, adding that his administration “takes a look at semiconductors and the entire electronics supply chain”.
However, analysts have declared that the imposition of new rights to imports of semiconductors would be difficult because most chips enter the United States as components already integrated into other products such as smartphones, laptops or graphic processing units used in AI data centers.
This includes the most advanced GPUs of NVIDIA, which are used by cloud service providers such as Amazon and Microsoft to train and exploit the models of large companies of large companies, including Openai, Google and Elon Musk's Grok.
Mohammad Ahmad, director general of the data analysis platform of the supply chain, Z2Data, said that most GPU IA enter the United States in the form of servers or servers racks, which are themselves assembled in a process in several stages involving several different countries.
GPUs contain chips produced mainly in Taiwan or South Korea, but are often sent for packaging and tests to countries in Southeast Asian such as Malaysia and the Philippines.
The chips are then returned to Taiwan or Mexico for the assembly of the printed circuit card, where new components are added before integration into servers exported to the United States for use in AI data centers.
“Even if the GPU himself is exempt from prices, you will always be affected by massive costs in the United States if the prices still apply to components,” said Ahmad. “The number of product categories is so large, and the smallest component can lower your supply chain.”
Kundojjala semianalysis noted that even with the 32% price offered by the Trump administration for the leader in the leader in flea manufacturing, Taiwan, the production of semiconductors in the United States would always be more expensive because the prices increase the prices of key tools and materials.
“The threat of American ball joints is the ability to rebuild on earth manufacturing is real,” he said. “It will be cheaper to strengthen manufacturing capacities outside the United States, while companies with the largest part of American manufacturing are most lost.”
A framework for a Taiwanese flea design house which provides Amazon said that if high prices are imposed on the sector, American customers of his business should absorb costs for the coming years.
“Amazon's first reaction is to go to their supplier and say:” You produce them in Taiwan, and that creates an additional cost to me, so reduce your prices “”, they said.
“(Amazon is) will not demand that the chip is making the chip in the United States, because it will take years to strengthen capacity and strengthen the product,” added the person. “But we will not lower our prices – if we do it, we will be screwed by the American government because we would be frustrated their policy of forcing people to make all the tokens in America.”
Geoffrey Gertz, a principal researcher at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, said that the Trump administration has always had the capacity to combat the risk in its AI industry following the survey of article 232 with “a much wider potential toolbox using government supply policies, changes in tax laws and other business policies or not translated to adjust the risk national security resulting from these imports ”.
He added: “The question is whether this process ends quickly with a price of 25% on fleas, or if it will be a more creative policy process that considers a wider range of potential results.”
Additional Melissa Heikkilä report in London
