US Trade Representative: Semiconductor tariffs are important, but no immediate plans to impose them

Central News Agency, Manassas, Virginia, May 22. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said today that the US currently has no plans to impose new tariffs on semiconductors, but he also said that it is important to protect the industry through tariffs to promote the return of chip manufacturing. According to Reuters and Bloomberg, Greer said at a memory chip expansion event for Micron Technology Inc. in northern Virginia that any tariff measures taken by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) regarding the Section 232 national security investigation aimed at protecting the US semiconductor industry must be properly timed to promote domestic production capacity. Greer said, "It is very important to impose tariffs on semiconductors, but more important than protecting facilities like this is ensuring that we push forward at the right time and with a reasonable magnitude." He made it clear that tariff measures would not be introduced immediately "tomorrow or next week." Greer said that after US President Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing last week, the government's attitude toward chip tariffs has not changed. Related work includes studying supporting measures so that chip manufacturers setting up factories in the US will not be affected. He said, "The expectation is that everyone must set up factories in the US, and there will be some kind of coefficient or multiplier mechanism in this return phase, which means that if you set up a factory in the US, you can import within a certain quota."