POTUS wants to put a big tariff on all semiconductors coming into the USA

[thewayne]

Is he trying to court the anti-data center vote? That's about all that I can figure. It would absolutely knee-cap all data center construction and send AI investments tumbling.

I really don't need more examples to illustrate that the man has absolutely no idea what he's doing, yet he continues spewing them forth like a teenager being paid to hand out store closing flyers on a street corner.

Somehow the belief is that this will spur chip fabrication production, as there is a carve-out that the more money you spend on creating more chip factories, the lower your tariff will be. It takes a long time to make a chip fab, and we don't make the machines that make the machines that make the chips. All of this is a very slow process, and no amount of money can make that pipeline flow any faster.

Are we tired of winning yet?

https://gizmodo.com/president-trumps-love-of-tariffs-comes-into-conflict-with-his-love-of-data-centers-2000803876

Comments

[armiphlage]

Considering he sabotaged the CHIPS Act just after semiconductor companies had invested serious money in breaking ground on US semiconductor facilities, I suspect investors will not want to risk being fooled again. Chip companies don't pay the tariffs, after all, but they would have to pay for US facilities. And they might have to "gift" part-ownership of those facilities after making the investment.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-07-21/trumps-transgender-based-attack-on-chips-act-is-his-most-unhinged-yet

(bias note: my factory used to make parts for machines that made chips)

[thewayne]

Yeah, him shooting down the CHIPS Act was quite bizarre.  But he didn't do the bill, so it wasn't surprising.  It makes this action all the more weird.

[graydon]

If you've got someone with delusions of autarchy whispering in the mad king's ear, you get mutated bad ideas.

The mutation almost never improves them.

[dewline]

I doubt that he wants localized chip fabrication inside the US, really. Nor, I suspect, would his inner circle...or most of it, anyway.

[thewayne]

I doubt the chip makers want it, either: those employees are highly-skilled and want to be compensated appropriately.

[kaishin108]

I thought judges said he couldn't do these tariffs, argh.

He is just trying to destabilize is my thought.

[thewayne]

He's found some other tariff loopholes that he's exploiting and will continue to use until the courts shut him down again, but it will take law suits and their progression through the courts until those loopholes get shut down.

[halfshellvenus]

That man is a consistent fuckwit. You never know where he's going to display that next, but he WILL find a way to make new bad decisions nearly every day. Gah.

[silveradept]

This is because he's very bad at weighing consequences against each other, so he goes with whatever he things is the thing that will produce the strongest reaction of support for him from his base and opposition from his opposition. In this case, he wants to say "them foreigners are doing all this work and undercutting our great American production" without realizing, of course, that if he wanted American production, he needed to lay the groundwork for it when he was last in office so that it could mature to about now. Or that he's at least theoretically part of an interconnected economic network where making rash actions about who to bomb, attack, or cozy up to will have ramifications down the line about what's available to him and the country.

You almost want to have competent evil instead, just because of the competence. Almost.

[thewayne]

Yeah, that's the problem with incompetent chaotic evil.