President Donald Trump said he plans to put tariffs on imported steel and semiconductor chips as soon as next week, a report said.
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“I’ll be setting tariffs next week and the week after on steel and on, I would say, chips,” the president said on Friday to reporters aboard Air Force One as he travels to Alaska to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Reuters reported.
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“I’m going to have a rate that is going to be lower at the beginning — that gives them a chance to come in and build — and very high after a certain period of time,” Trump said according to the report.
At the beginning of June, the president placed a 50% tariff rate on imported steel and aluminum. And just last week, he said he would put a 100% tariff on chips, adding that if companies build in the U.S. then “there is no charge.”
Trump made the announcement during a press conference in the Oval Office with Apple CEO Tim Cook. During the conference, Cook said the iPhone maker is investing an extra $100 billion in the U.S., bringing the total of its planned corporate domestic spending to $600 billion over four years.
“But the good news for companies like Apple is if you’re building in the United States or have committed to build, without question, committed to build in the United States, there will be no charge,” the president added.
“The higher you go, the more likely it is they build a plant here,” President Trump said in mid-June at the White House in regards to a possible tariff rate hike on imported autos.
The policy, part of Trump’s “America First” agenda, aims to bolster domestic manufacturing by penalizing companies that rely on overseas chip production. For AI companies, the stakes are particularly high. Semiconductors are the backbone of AI infrastructure, powering everything from data centers to autonomous vehicles.
Yet while Trump’s semiconductor tariffs threaten global supply chains, years of U.S. buildout plans have left AI’s biggest firms largely insulated.
— Joseph Zeballos-Roig and Shannon Carroll contributed to this article.