Nvidias own disclosures about the customs classifications of its products paint a similar picture. Of the over 1,300 items the company lists on its website, less than one-fifth appear to be exempt from Trumps new tariffs, according to their correspondent HTS codes. Nvidia declined to comment to WIRED on which of its products it believes the new import duties apply to or not.Bad News for US AI FirmsIf a wide range of GPUs and other electronic components are subject to the highest country-specific tariffs, which are scheduled to kick in next week, US chipmakers and AI firms could be facing a significant increase in costs. That could potentially hamper efforts to build more data centers and train the worlds most cutting-edge artificial intelligence models in the US.That's why Nvidias stock price is currently getting killed, Rasgon says, having shed roughly one-third of its value since the start of 2025.AI hardware, particularly high-end GPUs from Nvidia, will see rising costs, potentially stalling AI infrastructure development in the US, says Wei from Eurasia Group. Cloud computing, quantum computing, and military-grade semiconductor applications could also be impacted due to higher costs and supply uncertainties.Mark Wu, a professor at Harvard Law School who specializes in international trade, says the looming possibility that other countries embedded in the semiconductor supply chain could impose retaliatory tariffs on the US is creating a very unpredictable environment for businesses. Trump may also soon announce more tariffs specifically targeting chips, something he alluded to at a press briefing on Thursday. There's so many different scenarios, Wu says. Its almost futile to sort of speculate without knowing what's under consideration.More Challenges to ReshoringTrump has said that his trade policies are intended to bring more manufacturing to the US, but they threaten to reverse what had been a bumper period for US chipmaking. The Semiconductor Industry Association recently released figures showing that sales grew 48.4 percent in the Americas between February 2023 and 2024, far above rates in China, where sales only increased 5.6 percent, and Europe, which saw sales decrease 8.1 percent.The US has a relatively small share of the global chipmaking market as a whole, however, due to decades of offshoring. Fabrication plants located in the country account for just 12 percent of worldwide capacity, down from 37 percent in 1990. The CHIPS Act, introduced under the Biden administration, sought to reverse the trend by appropriating $52 billion for investment in chip manufacturing, training, and research. Trump called the law a horrible thing and recently set up a new office to manage its investments.A glaring omission in the list of HTS code exempt from Trumps tariffs are those that correspond to lithography machines, a highly sophisticated category of equipment central to chipmaking. Most of the worlds advanced lithography machines are made today in countries like the Netherlands (subject to a 20 percent tariff) and Japan (a 24 percent tariff). If these devices become significantly more costly to import, it could get in the way of bringing semiconductor manufacturing back to the US.