U.S. President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters on Friday aboard Air Force One, suggested that duties on U.S. semiconductor imports could rise by up to 300%, Bloomberg reports.

Trump has said he will set duty rates on chips and steel within the next two weeks. He said the rates will be "lower in the beginning ... and very high after a certain amount of time." "I'm going to have a rate that's going to be 200%, 300%?" - he reasoned.

Bloomberg notes that Trump may have misspoke on steel duties. In June, he already raised duties on steel and aluminum imports to 50%.

How has the market reacted?

Trump's comments on chip duties worried investors. The VIX volatility index, known as the fear index, soared 0.6%. The S&P 500 U.S. broad market index of U.S. stocks, which had opened trading with growth, moved to a decline. At the time of publication, it was losing 0.1%. The Nasdaq Composite index was down 0.2%. Shares of chip makers Advanced Micro Devices, Broadcom and Nvidia fell 1-2%.

The Dow Jones index, which hit a record high in early trading Friday, held on to a 0.2% gain.

Context

Trump said last week that he plans to impose a roughly 100 percent tax on semiconductor imports during an event with Apple CEO Tim Cook. Companies that move production to the U.S. would be exempt from the tax, he added.

"They are all rushing here [the US - OnInvest] because they want to get ahead of the imposition of tariffs. If they don't open production here, they're going to have to pay, in some cases, 200%, 300%. I haven't even set some of the tariffs yet," Trump said Friday, according to an audio recording obtained by Barron's. The U.S. president is headed to Alaska to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor

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