SEOUL: South Korea’s commerce minister mentioned on Saturday (Jan 17) {that a} US proclamation imposing a 25 per cent tariff on certain advanced computing chips would have a restricted affect on South Korean firms.
“Whereas the federal government stays cautious at an early stage, the first-phase measures introduced to date deal with superior chips made by Nvidia and AMD,” Commerce Minister Yeo Han-koo mentioned.
“For the reason that reminiscence chips that South Korean firms primarily export are at the moment excluded, the fast affect is anticipated to be restricted.”
Yeo cautioned, nonetheless, that it was “not but time to be reassured”, noting uncertainty over when and the way a possible second section may very well be expanded.
He added that the federal government would proceed to work carefully with business to hunt the absolute best final result for South Korean firms.
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a proclamation to handle nationwide safety considerations associated to semiconductor imports, imposing a 25 per cent tariff on sure synthetic intelligence chips, comparable to Nvidia’s H200 AI processor and AMD’s MI325X.
The White Home mentioned the tariffs could be narrowly targeted and wouldn’t apply to chips and spinoff gadgets imported for US knowledge centres – an enormous shopper of AI chips – startups, non-data centre shopper purposes, non-data centre civil industrial purposes and US public sector purposes.
The US, within the close to future, can also impose broader tariffs on imports of semiconductors and their spinoff merchandise to incentivise home manufacturing, in line with the actual fact sheet.
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick mentioned on Friday that South Korean chipmakers and Taiwanese firms that aren’t investing within the US could resist 100 per cent tariffs except they decide to elevated manufacturing on American soil, Bloomberg reported. Lutnick was at a groundbreaking ceremony for Micron’s new plant exterior Syracuse, New York.
The proclamation follows a nine-month investigation underneath Part 232 of the Commerce Growth Act of 1962 and targets various high-end semiconductors assembly sure efficiency benchmarks and gadgets containing them for import duties.
The motion is a part of a broader effort to create incentives for chipmakers to supply extra semiconductors within the US and reduce reliance on chip producers in locations like Taiwan.
