To: sbfm who wrote (195513 ) 9/5/2025 8:13:49 AM From: Elroy 2 RecommendationsRecommended By
Read Replies (1) | Respond to Trump warns ‘fairly substantial’ chip tariffs are coming; signals Apple, others will be safe Any speculation how this would work/impact/not impact for QCOM? Apple is mentioned in the discussion of chip tariffs. Apple doesn't make any chips. They design many, and some other companies make them. Most US chip design companies don't make chips. They themselves can't make them here because they don't make anything other than designs. They outsource the "making" of the chips to foundries, packaging, assembly and test merchant providers. To my knowledge very few discrete chips are imported into the US and then assembled into the final product here. A few are, but that segment (assembled in the USA) is something Trump wants to grow. If he makes US assembled final products more expensive because the input semiconductors are more expensive due to tariffs, then it's going to reduce company's interest in manufacturing anything in the USA that includes a semiconductor. Tesla for example probably imports lots of discrete semiconductors in order to build their cars in the USA. Tariffs on imported chips will make Tesla's US manufacturing less profitable. Why does he mention Apple when discussing tariffs on semiconductors? There are massive massive overseas contract manufacturers (Sanmina, Jabil Circuit, Celestica, Foxconn, the list goes on and on). These guys all do $$billion of dollars in sales of electronics devices / systems with a 5% operating margin - they're just massive assembly factories, sorta brainless, but high volume and at low a cost as possible. If he's trying to make them move back to Kansas, well, OK, have fun. It seems a lot easier to just slap a 15% tariff on imported electronics, and let the supply chain stay where it is, and have US electronics cost 15% more. Moving the entire global supply chain (not entire, the percentage corresponding to US consumption of electronics, so maybe 40% of the entire global supply chain) sounds like a pain in the butt. It would be easier to just say no US or US affiliated company can sell anything to China, and then let the chips fall where they may.
