Description: With the US – China trade war escalating, Nvidia has announced it may lose up to $5 billion amid the newest regulations which would tighten chip exports to China. The latest announcement by US President Donald Trump stated that tariff exemptions from products such as laptops, computers and smartphones were a temporary reprieve until the US readapts its tariff strategy to strengthen domestic manufacturing. Nvidia has recently announced they plan on developing a 1 million square feet of manufacturing space in Texas, as they believed it would generate approximately $500 billion in AI infrastructure within the next four years. The semiconductor industry remains at the pinnacle of the trade war between China and the US as the tariffs caused significant loses for tech giants across the globe.
Impact: China’s announcement of reprieving the US from their rare earth metal deposits has prompted the US in readjusting their tariff strategy which could backfire towards critical sectors such as the tech industry. Trump’s tariffs mostly directed at subverting Chinese export economic dominance reached staggering levels which caused Chinese President Xi Jinping to launch a tour of visits in Southeastern Asia. The visits aimed at strengthening existing strategic ties in an attempt to tackle the effects of the tariffs and form a bloc of strategic partners which in the long run would replace Chinese dependency on the US market. Trump’s tariff strategy currently only brought high risks and no concrete rewards for the US as China has pledged to follow the US in their weaponization of economic methods in the struggle for global dominance.