According to materials released by the White House, President Donald Trump imposed a 25% tariff on certain advanced computing chips on Wednesday the 14th, including Nvidia's H200 AI processor and AMD's MI325X, a similar semiconductor.

This is a tariff in the nature of an "export tax," which allows the sale of some of Nvidia's AI chips to China while repatriating a portion of the revenue to the national treasury.

The announcement cited national security concerns as the reason for the tariffs and is part of a broader effort to encourage semiconductor manufacturers to produce more chips domestically and reduce reliance on semiconductor manufacturers in regions like Taiwan.

This measure follows the submission of an investigative report by the federal Department of Commerce on December 22nd of last year regarding the impact of semiconductor imports on U.S. national security, under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act.

These tariffs will not apply to chips imported for U.S. data centers, startups, non-data center consumer applications, non-data center private industrial applications, and U.S. public sector applications.

Previously, President Trump stated on August 6th of last year, "I will impose about 100% tariffs on semiconductors," indicating that "all integrated circuits (chips) and semiconductors (semiconductors) coming into the United States" would be subject to the tariffs, and that companies building or promising to build semiconductor manufacturing plants in the United States would be exempt.

In effect, semiconductor tariffs have begun to be broadly imposed after five months. The White House stated in a fact sheet that "President Trump is likely to expand tariffs on imports of semiconductors and their derivative products and implement a tariff offset program to encourage domestic manufacturing as previously announced."

By NNP=Reporter Sung Ku Hong / Special Contribution to this paper NNP info@newsandpost.com