By AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach
BANGKOK (AP) — The Trump administration is taking the following steps to impose tariffs on major imports and launch an investigation into computer chip imports, chip manufacturing equipment and medicines:
The Commerce Department posted a notification about the probe to the federal register late Monday, seeking public comment within three weeks. It had not been officially announced before.
President Donald Trump suspended most of his biggest tariff hikes for 90 days last week, except for imports from China, but he says he is still planning tariffs on drug drugs, wood, copper and computer chips.
The Commerce Department said it is investigating how imports of computer chips containing many daily essentials, including cars, refrigerators, smartphones and other items, the equipment used to make them, and the products that contain them will affect national security. Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 allows the president to order tariffs for national security.
The probe includes an assessment of the domestic production potential of computer chips to meet US demand and the role of foreign manufacturing and assembly, testing and packaging in meeting those needs.
Among other aspects of the computer chip supply chain as a whole, the government will study the risks of concentrating computer chip production elsewhere and the impact on the US competitiveness of “foreign unfair trade practices and overpowered state support.”
After Trump said electronics were not included in what his administration calls up to 50% of “mutual” tariffs in some countries, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick explained in an interview with ABC News that drugs, semiconductors and cars would be treated as “sector-specific” tariffs.
“And they’re not available for negotiation,” Rutnick said. “They will only be part of re-firing the core national security items that need to be made in this country to the re-shore. We need to make medicines in this country,” he said. “We need to make semiconductors.”
The investigation into imports of medicines contains the ingredients used to make such drugs, and touches on many of the same aspects as relying on imported products to make them.
“Yeah, we’re going to do that,” Trump said Monday.
He said it was in a “not too distant future.”
“We want to make our own medicine, so we do it,” he said.
More than 70% of the ingredients used to make medicines made in the US, or active pharmaceutical ingredients are produced in other countries, along with leading suppliers in India, the European Union and China. The US produces about a fifth of all medicines made worldwide, but it consumes much more than any other country, and about 45%.
The US is also a major producer of semiconductors, but only in some regions. For certain types of advanced chips, they rely heavily on imports from Taiwan and South Korea. In particular, Taiwan controls advanced logic chip production at 92% of all manufacturing capacity, with South Korea accounting for 8%, according to the International Trade Bureau.
They needed products such as laptops, smartphones and components needed to account for nearly $174 billion in US imports from China last year. The administration’s plans suggest that such electronic devices will be taxed by previous (non-‘mutual’) tariffs.
Major computer chip manufacturers like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. have invested heavily in US manufacturing facilities due to incentives introduced during former President Joe Biden’s tenure, but the costly process of changing the entire supply chain takes years.
Separately, the Commerce Department said Monday it had withdrawn from its 2019 contract, which suspended anti-dump investigations on fresh tomato imports from Mexico in 90 days. The current arrangement said it failed to protect US growers from “unfairly priced” imports of tomatoes. Most tomatoes in Mexico are subject to a 20.91% tariff.
Original issue: April 15th, 2025 10:39am EDT
