Commerce Secretary Lutnick just drew a clear line on chip tariffs at the G20 innovation meeting: build in America, pay zero. Build offshore, pay to enter.
He called the policy "targeted and thoughtful" — tariffs will scale with where you manufacture. Seoul says nothing is final yet, but the signal is loud.
Narrow chip duties kicked off in January. This is the first time Washington has openly tied the rate to domestic investment.
Samsung and SK Hynix already have U.S. packaging and memory projects in motion. A tariff structure that exempts domestic production and penalizes imports will accelerate that capex shift across the Pacific.
It also means Korean-made HBM and DRAM flowing into U.S. data centers just got more expensive — unless those fabs move stateside.
The carrot-and-stick is now policy, not speculation.
He called the policy "targeted and thoughtful" — tariffs will scale with where you manufacture. Seoul says nothing is final yet, but the signal is loud.
Narrow chip duties kicked off in January. This is the first time Washington has openly tied the rate to domestic investment.
Samsung and SK Hynix already have U.S. packaging and memory projects in motion. A tariff structure that exempts domestic production and penalizes imports will accelerate that capex shift across the Pacific.
It also means Korean-made HBM and DRAM flowing into U.S. data centers just got more expensive — unless those fabs move stateside.
The carrot-and-stick is now policy, not speculation.