🖼 💸 Trump's Tariffs May Dampen the Data Center Investment Boom of Tech Giants in the US. US President Donald Trump announced the imposition of high tariffs on major technology equipment supplying countries, including 34% on China, 32% on Taiwan, and 25% on South Korea, and...

💸 Trump Tariffs Could Stymie Big Tech's US Data Center Investment Spree

US President Donald Trump announced high tariffs on major technology equipment suppliers, including 34% on China, 32% on Taiwan, 25% on South Korea, and a 10% benchmark tariff on all imported goods. Analysts warned that this move would significantly increase the cost of data center equipment (last year, the import value of electronic products was nearly $486 billion, of which data processing equipment was about $200 billion), potentially hindering the multi-billion-dollar artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure investment plans of tech giants in the US. This may force companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google to re-evaluate and potentially cut data center expansion spending, turning to procurement hedging or supply chain adjustment. The high costs also threaten large projects, such as the $500 billion "Stargate" data center project planned among OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle. Although semiconductors are currently exempt, the tariffs have brought new challenges to cloud service providers facing pressure from AI budget reviews and may lead to a shrinkage in demand for software and cloud services. The news caused a significant decline in tech stocks on Thursday, with the Nasdaq index plunging 4%.

(Reuters)

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