The American president wishes to ensure the economic and technological supremacy of his country, in particular vis-à-vis the Chinese rival. The wave of customs duties he has implemented could make exactly the opposite.
During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump received support from the American new technology industry, tired by the regulations deemed excessive in the Biden era and seduced by a president perceived as more “Business Friendly”. On the AI, in particular, Donald Trump, widely supported by Elon Musk, himself a champion of a deregulated AI through his Grok chatbot, promised entrepreneurs the freedom to innovate without the slightest intervention of the government.
As soon as he took power, Donald Trump gave pledges to these new supporters, appointing personalities from the AI industry to key positions and sending a decree signed by Joe Biden to supervise the development of this technology. However, another aspect of the White House policy constitutes a threat to the American AI industry: unprecedented customs duties implemented against most countries in the world. “The economic uncertainty induced by Trump’s customs tariffs could become the main obstacle to American supremacy on AI”, go so far as to write semiianalysis experts, consultant specializing in semiconductors, in a recent report.
Increased costs for American AI actors
Admittedly, semiconductors, essential for training AI models, are for the time being, in the same way as smartphones and computers, excluded from the so-called “reciprocal” prices that the American president announced during the “Liberation Day”. But on the one hand, this respite is only temporary: Donald Trump repeatedly repeated his desire to relocate the semiconductor industry to the United States, and to rely on customs duties to achieve his ends. On April 13, barely two days after having announced that semiconductors would be spared by the wave of customs tariffs, the president announced the establishment of customs duties on computer flea “in the coming weeks”.
On the other hand, the AI value chain is not reduced to semiconductors. The finished products containing these, for example, will indeed be affected by customs duties. This includes computer servers. Whether manufactured and sold by Chinese companies (Inspur, Lenovo or Huawei) or by American companies such as Dell, Hewlett Packard or IBM, they are for a good part produced in China, although American companies have started to relocate part of their production to Vietnam, Mexico or directly in the United States for a few years. However, all products imported from China currently face 145%customs duties …
That’s not all: the various parts and accessories (motherboard, memory modules, printed circuit, chassis, cables, connectors, etc.) necessary for the design of a cutting -edge AI chip, like the GPUS of Nvidia, are also massively imported from Asia. As the Semiianalysis report notes, “this category reflects a strong dependence on Asia. Taiwan dominates, but China is also a leading player.” Even in the event that semiconductors are spared, the customs duties currently in place will therefore greatly increase the cost of spending implemented by American tech giants to continue to progress in AI.
Thus, the Semianalysis study estimates that building a data center in the United States could cost 5 to 10% more, an increase that may seem reasonable, but which, on billion dollars, can quickly be problematic. Wafers manufacturing costs should increase by 15% in semiconductor factories based in the United States. Thus, ironically, Semianalysis provides that customs duties will lower the competitiveness of semiconductors produced on American soil in the face of those from Taiwan: “If it is assumed that the cost increase will be postponed on customers, and even after taking into account the 32% customs duties on the chips produced in Taiwan, the semiconductors produced in the United States more expensive than their Taiwanese counterparts. “
Harmful economic uncertainty
However, the American Big Techs, which have a substantial cash, should be able to take care of this additional cost: if it will decrease their margins, it is unlikely that it slows their progress sufficiently in AI to make them vulnerable to Chinese competition. More than the cost increase, it is the uncertainty generated by chaotic customs policy which poses a real risk for the American tenors of AI. This technology requires very expensive investments which will not be profitable in the medium or long term. To invest with confidence, companies therefore need a certain stability and visibility in terms of standards and regulations. So many elements that have deserted the American landscape with multiple reversals and other unpredictable decisions of the new administration.
“AI Laboratories must make dozens of billions of dollars in capital investments to improve the quality of their products and systems at the necessary rate. However, economic uncertainty often leads to delay, delay which led to a drop in investments,” notes semianalysis.
If the American tech giants still plan to invest records in AI, several of them have started to discreetly reduce the wing. Amazon and Microsoft both frozen certain data centers projects. If uncertainty about economic policies were to continue, others could act in the same way.
In addition, if Donald Trump has so far paused a number of customs tariffs for a period of 90 days, a resumption of these, accompanied by continuous pressures on the Fed or other hazardous outings of Donald Trump, could plunge the American economy into the recession, limiting the Big Tech money entries, so their ability to invest. Without even going as far as the recession, certain economic sanctions decided by Trump could have the same effect: the recent decision of the president to prohibit Nvidia with the export of H20 fleas to the Middle Empire will lead to a shortfall for Nvidia, whose graphic processors are necessary for the progress of the generative AI.
