Friday, May 24th 2024
Biden Administration to Revive Trump-Era Tariffs on China-made GPUs and Motherboards
The US Trade Representative (USTR) under Biden administration is preparing to reinstate tariffs on certain technology products imported from China, including GPUs and motherboards. The 25% duties, initially imposed by the Trump administration in 2019 but later suspended, are being revived as part of broader efforts to address concerns over China's economic and trade practices. The tariffs are intended to protect American companies from what the administration describes as unfair Chinese trade actions like intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers that undermine U.S. competitiveness. While no specific effective date was provided, the reinstated tariffs are expected to impact major Chinese computing component suppliers significantly. The revival of the Trump-era tariffs marks a reversal from the previous administration's move to temporarily suspend the duties in 2020 as a goodwill gesture during broader trade negotiations with Beijing.
However, those talks ultimately stalled amid the COVID-19 pandemic and rising bilateral tensions over economic and national security issues. Industry groups have expressed concerns that reviving the tariffs could disrupt tech supply chains, increase costs for U.S. companies and consumers, and potentially invite further Chinese retaliation. The tariffs would apply to GPUs, motherboards and other computing components assembled in China regardless of whether the raw components themselves originated from the country. With tensions already elevated over issues like Taiwan and advanced semiconductor production, the tariff announcement could set the stage for further economic friction between the world's two largest economies absent a negotiated resolution on tech trade.
Sources:
US Trade Representative, via Tom's Hardware
However, those talks ultimately stalled amid the COVID-19 pandemic and rising bilateral tensions over economic and national security issues. Industry groups have expressed concerns that reviving the tariffs could disrupt tech supply chains, increase costs for U.S. companies and consumers, and potentially invite further Chinese retaliation. The tariffs would apply to GPUs, motherboards and other computing components assembled in China regardless of whether the raw components themselves originated from the country. With tensions already elevated over issues like Taiwan and advanced semiconductor production, the tariff announcement could set the stage for further economic friction between the world's two largest economies absent a negotiated resolution on tech trade.
95 Comments on Biden Administration to Revive Trump-Era Tariffs on China-made GPUs and Motherboards
www.autoweek.com/news/a38252667/battery-experts-explain-chevy-bolt-fires/
How many times have they recalled the Bolt for ex? How many hundreds of K?
The military discussion is weird. The Chinese carrier looks like crap as you mentioned, but China likely reached Hypersonic missiles first. Which is actually the solution to the Carrier problem.
Hypersonic Missiles are really expensive, like $10million to $100million each. But it's worth it if those take out a $10 Billion US Supercarrier.
No one knows how good Chinese Hypersonic vs Aegis Missile Shield is. Literally no one. Not even US generals or Chinese generals. What we do know is that China has a reasonable plan vs Carriers though.
If you think that a US Carrier group is that weak you would forget why they are there in the first place. It was China that shot Missiles everyday when at Taiwan won a Democratic election in 1976. Yep the US has had a Carrier group to stop Chinese aggression since that time and as someone who's father worked in the Military Industrial Complex I can tell you that we in the commercial world have no idea what that entity creates for War and if you don't think they have been working on a solution to Hypersonic. The US already has working laser weaponry anyway making any fossil fuel based system inert.
By the way nothing is as expensive as American Military production in today's World.
Yea, im a bit salty as you can see. It's not just the dollar to euro either. Some taxes are brutal, as i have mentioned. The stores love to add 15-30( YES 30!!!)% extra on top of the price too. That's how you get a 2500 euro 4090. Anyways, this is just bad news for the US consumers. I dunno if anything would change in the bigger picture. All I know is, the era of cheap electronics seems to be over. I guess whatever GPU/PC i buy will have to last me at least 5-6 years. God knows i won't be buying a new video card every single generation or even every 2-3 one.
tbh there's no getting around the taxes no matter where you live in the world. We all have to pay it one way or another.
It's not unique to China as you are implying here and it has nothing to do with their factory count or product output. It's something that the vast majority of successful developing nations have deployed.
It's objectively incorrect to say the US gave up manufacturing output. The US's manufacturing out has continued to increase on average ever since it first started being measured:
Similar to the transition from an agricultural based economy, a services based economy looses jobs in the manufacturing industry but output continues to increase. The agriculture and manufacturing sector are supporting pillars for a services based economy that allows for the creation of a ton of high value jobs. As I pointed out in my last comment, 98% of all employment in the UK is in the services industry. That's not a bad thing, that means that manufacturing and agriculture has become very efficient to support all those services jobs.Intel has thus far been granted $8 billion in CHIPS act funding out of the total $280 Billion. That's not much higher than others like TSMC that have roughly received 6.4 billion. These companies may be granted more in the future but to say they've "gobbled the absolute part of it" is completely incorrect, they gotten exactly 2.8%.China accounts for 31.5% of US drug imports with India being number 2 and a bunch of others coming in after that. The supply chain is diversified enough to withstand china pulling it's drug exports to the US as they are some 12 other exporters the US already does business with. Worst of all for China is that it's geopolitical competitor india would likely pick up a lot of those previously Chinese orders.
Most generic drugs are not complicated to make. There might be a shortage of more complicated formulas but the basics without a doubt will be covered by competitors to China.No country produces EVs without foreign parts regardless of if we are talking about China or the US. Ditto goes for ICUs as well, they all contain chips.This comment is wrong on multiple fronts. First the US only gets 18.93% of it's power from Nuclear. The lion's share comes from Fossil fuels.
Second, the EU produces the vast majority of it's energy from renewables:
There's a bigger problem for China though and that's down to the fact that it's highly rely reliant on energy imports. It imports 85% of it's total domestic oil consumption and 40% of it's domestic gas consumption. It also imports coal from Australia and Indonesia. The problem comes down to a matter of supply lines, where the oil imports have to pass through the Bab-el-Mandeb straight, along the bottom of india, and finally to China. The problem is that there are multiple US bases and US allies located along that route. Imports from Indonesia would suddenly become very difficult and obviously imports from Australia would completely stop.
Mind you a protracted war is absolutely not in China's best interest. China is likely to be fighting a US led coalition with South Korea, Japan, Australia, and likely other European allies as well. China's economy will loose access to the international banking system and most if not all external investment sources.You mean like those hypersonic Russian missiles that were taken down by antiquated Patriot systems in Ukraine with novice operators? As the old saying goes, everyone has a plan until the shit hits the fan. The US has real world experience, the Chinese are experts in attacking fishing vessels with water cannons. Big difference.
Yes, USA's missile defenses on our Navy is likely the best in the world. Certainly the best on sea (though Israel might beat us with their Iron Dome). But missiles don't work alone, they fight as a team... and its just as easy as launching at the same time that can completely dismantle defenses in practice.
China isn't going to lob those missiles one at a time like some game of video game... If China truly begins to fight... they'll be going for the kill.
Ukraine is a very different situation. There's no $10 Billion targets in Ukraine like a US Gerald Ford Supercarrier full full airwing armaments. Russia has no reason to spam extremely expensive hypersonic missiles there aside from propaganda purposes. (Cheaper missiles and glide bombs handle that area better). In contrast, the USA's Navy structure is fully built around our carriers. It would be a devastating blow to lose even one of our carriers.Fully Chinese DJI drones are literally being used by both the Ukrainians and the Russians in the current war over there. China's already mass producing drones domestically that have military applications.
I mean hell, Iran is making fully domestic drones today. Drone technology is surprisingly low-tech and easy to do. China has huge benefits over Iran (including 7nm chips, wide variety of advanced senosrs, Li-ion batteries, large scale plastics, and is the hub of cheap manufacturing).
USA's military has highlighted our weakening manufacturing center to be a possible weakness moving forward. In particular, our chip supply is largely tied up in Taiwan, which... would likely be cutoff or hampered during a hypothetical war in the region.
Now, I think USA's anti-air guns will make short-work of drones in particular. But Ukraine has proven how cheaply-and-easily DJI drones can be converted into a military suicide bomber. Just strap a mortar on any ol' DJI drone and bam, its a deadly weapon. AA Guns aren't perfect either, the operators could fall asleep at the wheel or miss a target, or think that the enemy drones are a bird or something and fail to fire in time.
A lot of false claims and hypocrisy in these tarrifs.
No one can with hypersonics. Much less "hypersonics" that Russia and China have.* They're too expensive and slow to produce.
Russia has done waves of them at limited Patriot batteries with some NASAMS and whatever Cold War era stuff they could cobble together within Ukraine in conjunction with more typical cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and cheap drones which is probably about how it'd go vs China and even then their hit rates aren't that good vs stationary buildings.
I'm not suggesting that they're 0% risk here but you're basically buying into Chinese propaganda if you think they're going to work any better than the Russian stuff they copied.Missile defense also won't work alone for a carrier group and is anything but easy to dismantle.
The main issue with US carrier AD is the expense and slow manufacture time of the missiles would mean they would get used up quickly in a hot war with a peer/near peer power but the effectiveness while they have missiles to shoot is going to be incredibly high.
It should be noted however that the same issue applies, but more so, to hypersonics or even "hypersonics". They're one of the most cost prohibitive and slow to produce weapon systems out there.Which is why for critical parts fabs and associated factories started construction in the US years ago and are finishing up soon.
For other parts the US manufacturing is actually quite solid and quite a lot can and is made domestically.The issue with AA auto cannon is that they're short ranged (typically a few km for 30-40mm guns which is what most are using), and therefore you need to buy heaps and heaps of them to put everywhere, not effectiveness.
They're VERY effective within their range. They're even good against missiles believe it or not. Especially with modern fused explosive ammo that makes them perform more like long ranged shotguns. Skynex for instance is supposed to be able to shoot down most missiles within 30 shots for instance. Its already been demonstrated and used in Ukraine so this isn't some baseless claim either
The US and various other countries started programs to produce and mass buy various auto cannons for anti drone work back in 2021-2022. The development is basically done now its just building, buying, and fielding the equipment and that started to happen around late 2023 or so depending on the country you want to talk about.
*China's and Russians hypersonic missiles are effectively just modified Iskander ballistic missile fired from aircraft at high speeds from longer ranges to achieve sort've hypersonic speed when going in a straight line. Or just straight up intermediate range large scale ballistic missiles that have conventional warheads but a fast hypersonic re-entry....which is typical for such missiles anyways. Those would get shot down by something like a MIM-104C PAC-2 or PAC-3.
Again they're dangerous but they're way Way WAY overhyped and fall within currently designed and fielded AD threat profiles. The truly scary hypersonic stuff that everyone was worried about, and what Russia/China were claiming they had, is something that can close AND maneuver at hypersonic speeds at low altitudes. Which NOBODY has working properly right now. NOBODY. Kinzhal and its Chinese clones have to slow to maneuver which is why they get shot down by Patriot and even NASAMS (which uses older missiles with modern guidance).
They have litteral home turf advantage in everything while USA would have to haul over Pacific, their fleet is large and getting larger faster - and the individual ships doesn't have to be better, they just have to be good enough.
Also that laser weaponry de facto might as well not exist right now, nothing has ever moved past single test deployments and none of those were against ballistic missiles.
As for the expensive American military production - it's called going in dry with no lube. All the big ones like Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman etc. are ripping 'Murica off (and European ones are honestly the same). Military shit IS way overpriced and if you make anti-air missiles costing 1 million each you are a fool and I am putting it mildly.
Let's pay 5-8k for a single dumb artillery shell, oh what joy! Oh, or maybe tanks for 20 million each! Sure looks good on that GDP table though...
Now the US has generally turned off the tap in some cases for reasons they do not control like the Panama Canal drying up. There are reports of runs on Chinese banks and markets that were engaged in serious trade are empty. I even read something about Foxconn issuing massive lay offs. The truth is China needs USA more than USA needs China. From 1940-1980 America was the strongest economy in the World. Even though China thanks to US firms like Apple and Walmart has become number 2 with US manufacturing jobs they are still the number one economy.
As far as the Lube argument goes. America was happy to give away it's commercial manufacturing but spent even more on Military Manufacturing. One reflection from what you are talking about is Corporate greed bringing Boeing from one of the Stars of the American technology revolution to a pariah for taking Aviation safety beneath greed in their Calculus. There are some things that have come out of that same entity that have made a huge difference like Himars, Bradley, Javelin and GPS in Ukraine.
Many of the SEA countries aren't too thrilled with the US, for many good reasons, but China has THOROUGHLY pissed them off to over the last 10yr or so and they're quite willing to help the US supply if things got hot since they KNOW China will massively screw them if given the chance.Google Iron Beam, DragonFire, and DE M-SHORAD.
Those are all either currently operational and fielded or soon to be as of right now.
Supposedly the naval version of Iron Beam will out put a 100KW laser per the Isreali 2023 news release and the ships that they're going into are going to be up and running in 3-5yr.
Around 100KW, depending on how long it fires/pulses per second, shooting down large missiles becomes practical. 200-300KW is when shooting down even the real fancy high end missiles, including hypersonics, that have some sort of anti laser tech or evasion methods gets practical. Supposedly around 1MW lasers can start to knock out ballistic missiles, or re-entry vehicles/warheads, in space.
The bigger issue with lasers is they're short range. Typically 5-10KM is the range given for what is out there right now. That and they suck down power like you won't believe! So the actual laser unit itself is fairly small and truck mountable but you need a BIG generator or 2 (or 3+ if you want 100's of KW) plus a whole bunch of fuel trucks to run them. The other big issue is field endurance. Most don't have long firing times before they need servicing.EVERYONE's MIC is WAAAAY overpriced for what you get. They're ALL absolutely playing grift games and milking the state for money during peacetime. That is not a nationalistic problem that is a human problem. By all accounts China's MIC is hilariously corrupt and has been for decades! Anytime you put lots of money and power in the hands of a few corruption will spring forth.
In addition, consider that the aircraft carrier will be within protective range of allied missile defense systems as well. Taiwan is literally right next to China and an aircraft carrier stationed there would have excellent reach into China itself. It's completely fine if China hurls all it's expensive, hard to make and slow to produce missiles at once, that will just ensure that after they do they blew one of their strongest strategic pieces at the start.
How many missiles can a flotilla plus Taiwanese defenses take down? This is a good question for the Chinese, if they under-estimate they completely waste every missile they shoot. If they over-estimate they waste $100 million per missile for each over the amount and deplete their stockpile.
It's a brute force amateur strategy, you need to first assess the capability of your opponents and of yourself. Using all your high-value assets without knowing either of those just makes it vastly more likely you'll be inefficient with their use. Once you've done that you knock your opponent off guard and then strike. Firing everything when it's most expected is likely to lead to the least results. China has other problems as well, it needs to finish assessing it's military assets to see how much was impacted by corruption. China has had serious issues with non-functioning, fake, and defective military assets. Confetti missiles don't help them.Russia has fully deployed Hypersonic missiles in Ukraine, it's just that they can't use make them in numbers you might be imagining due to the difficulty of producing them. There might not be expensive aircraft carriers there but infrastructure is a high value target to Russia. Knocking out power could easily be viewed as more valuable. Something like the destruction of the Kakhova dam is a good example of valuable infrastructure with value that exceeds it's price tag. Russia destroy it to slow down Ukraine's offensive and it was very effective. It massively reduces the front line and allowed Russian to concentrate defenses. Ironically though it wasn't taken out by hypersonic missiles, probably because other means were more effective / cheaper.DJI drones are cheap but I think the primary problem for them is range, susceptability to jamming / interference, and their top speed.
In regards to range, Ukraine is one continguous piece of land. Any Chinese Taiwanese conflict will involve flying drones over the south China sea to either attack US ships or targets in Taiwan. The problem is Taiwan is located more than 1,968 KM from mainland China, which puts it out of range for high-end military drones. Mind you that's what's called the Air line (shortest distance any two points in each country), the typical distance you'd need a drone to travel to reach the coast is 2,696 km. What this means is, save for a breakthough technology that massively extends their range, China will need to launch drones from their Navy ships or to gain a foothold in Taiwan to have any level of effectiveness. Mind you I don't see China lasting long if it only just gains a foothold in Taiwan due to the geography of Taiwan. Only the west side of Taiwan has suitable beaches for invasion. The back half of the country is mountanous and rocky. This not only provides a back defensive line but makes an excellent location for Taiwanese aircraft to launch attacks from due to the extremely high defensability. Any protracted war would just continue to funnel Chinese ships and troops through a narrow line of attack while the Chinese are also fending off against the US navy and airforce. Any amphibious attack is difficult but particularly when you are attacking a fortified locations and more so when your assault is also being attacked from the sea. D-Day just barely worked and that's considering the Germans thought the attack was going to happen somewhere else.
Jamming is also an issue as the war in Ukraine has shown us. As drones continue to increase in use, so too will the use of jamming. There will be a back and forth depending on who has air superiority and can take out said jammers. The same problems for China above apply here. Taiwanese jammers are likely to be well protected and Chinese ships will have to get close in order to get effective. This makes them vulernable.
The top speed of drones is also a problem. They are faster than land or sea based military assets but any drone carrying a decent sized payload is going to be vastly slower than traditional aircraft, even bombers. Altitude is also an issue, drones can't touch traditional aircraft in that regard either. Drone altitude makes it susceptiable to a whole bunch of different armaments. It's advantageous to fly close to the ground is forested locations but in a battle around the Taiwan straight it just makes you a sitting duck.
As a result of limitations I see drone's being less effective for China than they are for Russia. Completely different battlefields. The world has also seen their effectiveness and without a doubt everyone is incorporating them and also preparing counter-measures.That entire regions is dotted with US bases within immediate response range of Taiwan and that number is only growing. The US would have a large and immediate force to respond with. Any protracted war would see more assets coming in as well.Laser weapons have a problem in that they can be greatly mitigated by reflective surfaces. That can potentially mess with missile sensors though. If they are used, they will be used strategically. There's also speculation that the Chinese have some level of weapon space capability given Chinese satilites have been caught tailing US satilites. There may be some space element to the conflict but who knows.It's really not that different in China. The only difference is it's communist party officials pocketing the money and not some big corpa. It's disgusting either way.
That was figured out years ago: newatlas.com/boeing-laser-directed-energy-weapon-fog/33672/
That is regarding a 10KW demonstrator unit but the tech works for all lasers. Supposedly Iron Beam uses something similar but everyone is hush on the details. Its generally regarded to be a solved problem these days.