Bitcoin (BTC) is flat as the East Asian market is open for a week and trades over $84,000 as the White House presents a mixed message on tariffs on semiconductor and technology components.
Over the weekend, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the White House decision to exempt smartphones, computers and items such as semiconductors that power them from tariffs was a temporary measure.
President Trump later confirmed this at a press conference and said the tariff rate would be announced next week, but that there would be “flexibility” in the issue.
“The market saw material rebounds as popular appliance categories were exempt from China’s 125% tariffs,” BTSE COO Jeff May told Koindsk in a telegram message. “Even after saying Trump would simply move to another tariff bucket rather than being exempt entirely, the market has retained its profits amid rumours that business leaders could persuade the Trump administration to strip off some of the best tariffs.”
“From our side we see the challenge of moving our global supply chain away from China all night long, and we believe that low-end, low margin manufacturing is likely to move to other Asian countries after intermediating trade transactions.
Meanwhile, China announced its own tariffs on semiconductors, struggling US-born chips with a 34% tariff. However, China counts its origins as the location where the chips were manufactured and is not designed.
As most of our chip companies like AMD and Nvidia do not run their own fabs and instead rely on Taiwan, where China counts as its own territory, TSMC is effectively exempt from these tariffs.
China’s analysts acknowledge the short-term disruption from semiconductor tariffs, but see them widely as opportunities to accelerate domestic innovation, localization and restructuring of supply chains.
Local Taiwanese media reports that TSMC can accelerate the construction of another Arizona fab to provide more US manufactured chips as the cloud of uncertainty hangs down more than the sector.
In China, stock traders appear to be waiting for the final tariff news to make their next move.
Shanghai’s SSE composite index has increased by 0.8%, while Shenzhen’s technology-rich SZSE has increased by 0.9%. Hangsen in Hong Kong is up 2.4%.