President Trump on Tuesday again touted Nvidia’s $500 billion commitment to building AI infrastructure in the US, pledging to expedite the process for the chip giant and any other company planning big US investments.
“This is very big and exciting news. All necessary permits will be expedited and quickly delivered to NVIDIA, as they will to all companies committing to be part of the Golden Age of America!” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
Nvidia’s announcement brings Big Tech’s investment pledges to US AI infrastructure to just north of $1.6 trillion since Trump’s inauguration as the tech world tries to navigate the potential hazards of the president’s trade war while staying on the right side of a malleable administration.
Nvidia, for its part, did seem to make moves in US manufacturing partially due to Trump’s chaotic approach to trade policy, with on-again, off-again global tariffs affecting imports of AI servers containing its highly coveted GPUs, or graphics processing units.
Asked about Trump’s tariffs at its annual GTC event in March, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company was “preparing, and we have been preparing to manufacture onshore.” Huang reportedly attended a dinner at Mar-a-Lago last week, after which the Trump administration backed off new restrictions on the company’s chip exports to China.
Nvidia’s moves are the latest in Big Tech’s splashy announcements of plans to expand investments within the US.
In February, Apple (AAPL) committed to investing $500 billion to expand its US manufacturing over the next four years.
TSMC (TSM) — which makes the world’s most advanced chips with most of its manufacturing capacity in Taiwan — has committed to spending $100 billion over a similar time frame. The company had previously committed $65 billion to building out its US manufacturing capabilities with funding from the 2022 Chips and Science Act.
Just after Trump’s inauguration, Oracle (ORCL), OpenAI (OPAI.PVT), and SoftBank (SFTBY) announced a joint venture called Stargate, which the companies said would spend $500 billion on US AI data centers.
And after Trump’s election, Microsoft (MSFT) said it would spend $80 billion to build AI data centers. The company said “more than half” of that total would be invested in the US.
Apple’s US-centric moves have landed in the spotlight again amid Trump’s fluctuating tariff policies. Apple announced its $500 billion commitment just days after Trump said CEO Tim Cook promised him hundreds of millions of dollars in US investment and implied the pledge was due to his approach to trade policy.
“They don’t want to be in the tariffs,” Trump said in February.
However, it’s unclear how much of Apple’s commitment will be from new investments, given that the spending announced was in line with its prior capital expenditures.
Nevertheless, Trump’s relationship with Cook has weaved its way into tariff developments in the past several days. US Customs and Border Protection issued regulations late Friday exempting consumer electronics, networking equipment, and computing products — including GPUs and servers — from reciprocal tariffs.
That includes Trump’s ever-ballooning 145% levies on China, where Apple still does most of its production. Trump boasted Monday that he “helped Tim Cook recently.”
“I don’t want to hurt anybody, but the end result is we’re going to get to the position of greatness for our country,” he said.
But Trump also set the stage to impose tariffs on semiconductors Tuesday — the Commerce Department opened a probe into computer chips under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which grants the president the authority to impose tariffs on imports seen as essential to national security. And he has promised that most electronics will still get wrapped up in his tariffs.
“We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations,” he posted Sunday.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-promises-expedited-process-for-nvidias-us-supercomputer-plans-as-big-tech-pledges-top-16-trillion-173943856.html
