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South Korea’s Trade Minister said connected Saturday (January 17, 2026) that a U.S. proclamation imposing a 25% tariff connected definite advanced computing chips would person a constricted interaction connected South Korean companies.
“While the authorities remains cautious astatine an aboriginal stage, the first-phase measures announced truthful acold absorption connected precocious chips made by Nvidia and AMD,” Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo said.
“Since the representation chips that South Korean companies chiefly export are presently excluded, the contiguous interaction is expected to beryllium limited,” helium said
Mr. Yeo cautioned, however, that it was “not yet clip to beryllium reassured,” noting uncertainty implicit erstwhile and however a imaginable 2nd signifier could beryllium expanded.
He added that the authorities would proceed to enactment intimately with manufacture to question the champion imaginable result for South Korean companies.
U.S. President Donald Trump connected Wednesday (January 14) signed a proclamation to code national information concerns related to semiconductor imports, imposing a 25% tariff connected definite artificial quality chips, specified arsenic Nvidia’s H200 AI processor and AMD’s MI325X.
The White House said the tariffs would beryllium narrowly focused and would not use to chips and derivative devices imported for U.S. information centres – a immense user of AI chips – startups, non-data centre user applications, non-data centre civilian concern applications and U.S. nationalist assemblage applications.
The United States, successful the adjacent future, whitethorn also enforce broader tariffs connected imports of semiconductors and their derivative products to incentivise home manufacturing, according to the information sheet.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said connected Friday (January 16) that South Korean chipmakers and Taiwanese companies that are not investing successful the U.S. whitethorn look up to 100% tariffs unless they perpetrate to accrued accumulation connected American soil, Bloomberg reported. Mr. Lutnick was astatine a groundbreaking ceremonial for Micron’s caller works extracurricular Syracuse, New York.
The proclamation follows a nine-month probe nether Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and targets a fig of high-end semiconductors gathering definite show benchmarks and devices containing them for import duties. The enactment is portion of a broader effort to make incentives for chipmakers to nutrient much semiconductors successful the U.S. and alteration reliance on spot manufacturers successful places similar Taiwan.
