Officials warned the impact is limited for now, but said future tariff phases could expand quickly.
South Korea says it’s not going to sit quietly while Donald Trump slaps a 25% tariff on imported artificial intelligence chips.
On Sunday, a presidential spokesperson said the government will push for favorable terms and talk directly with the U.S. to protect its chipmakers.
The focus is Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, two of the biggest memory chip exporters in the world. Trump’s proclamation might not hit them immediately, but no one in Seoul is taking chances.
The official reminded reporters that last year, South Korea and the U.S. published a joint fact sheet. It said South Korea would not face worse tariff treatment than other chipmaking countries.
That agreement is now under pressure. The new tariff order only covers some types of advanced chips, for now, but things could escalate fast.
South Korea’s Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo said on Saturday that Trump’s new tariff plan mainly targets high-end artificial intelligence chips, not memory chips.
“While the government remains cautious at an early stage, the first-phase measures announced so far focus on advanced chips made by Nvidia and AMD,” he said. He pointed out that the memory chips South Korea usually exports are not included in this first phase, so the impact is “expected to be limited.”
But Yeo made it clear the government is not relaxed about the situation. “It is not yet time to be reassured,” he said, noting that no one knows how wide the next phase could be. He added that the government will keep working with local companies to secure the best possible deal for South Korea.
Trump signed the new tariff proclamation on Wednesday, claiming it’s about national security. It puts a 25% duty on AI chips like Nvidia’s H200 and AMD’s MI325X.
The White House said the scope is “narrow,” and the tariffs won’t apply to chips imported for U.S. data centers, public sector uses, consumer electronics, startups, or civil industrial applications that don’t involve data centers.
Still, the fact sheet makes it clear that wider tariffs are on the table. The U.S. could expand this to include more types of chips and related products to push more domestic production. Basically, if chipmakers don’t build factories in the U.S., they could get taxed hard.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that South Korean and Taiwanese chipmakers who aren’t investing in the U.S. could face tariffs as high as 100%.
“If you want to sell in America, you should build in America,” he said at the groundbreaking of Micron’s new plant in New York.
The new rules come after a nine-month investigation under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. The investigation targeted advanced chips that meet certain performance levels and the gear built around them.
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