New US chip tariffs could hit laptops, consoles and servers

The Trump administration is weighing a broader round of semiconductor tariffs that would reach well beyond chips themselves, extending to laptops, gaming consoles and data center servers, Politico reported Thursday, citing eight people familiar with the internal discussions. Neither the White House nor the Commerce Department has commented publicly.

The expanded scope is the notable part. Earlier chip tariffs targeted semiconductors as a category; this proposal would apply duties to finished products built around them, meaning the price impact would show up directly on consumer electronics and enterprise hardware rather than staying buried in a component cost. No tariff percentage has been finalized, and officials are also considering a phase-in period rather than an immediate start — the plan, as described, remains fluid enough that it could still be substantially revised in the coming weeks or months.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is said to favor a specific mechanism: duty-free import quotas sized to how much domestic chip manufacturing a company commits to build. In that structure, tariff relief would function as a direct reward for onshoring production rather than a blanket exemption.

The plan would also tighten an existing regime rather than start from scratch. A round of semiconductor tariffs introduced in January carved out exemptions for data centers, research and development, startups, consumer applications and government use; those carve-outs are among the things reportedly on the table for elimination this time.

Industry reaction, as described in the reporting, is mixed rather than uniformly opposed. Technology companies have raised concern that tariffs on data center hardware could slow buildouts in the middle of a period when they are already committing enormous sums to AI infrastructure. Trade groups say they support the underlying goal of expanding US chip manufacturing, but note that building meaningful domestic capacity takes years and billions of dollars — a mismatch with a tariff timeline that could move much faster than new fabs can be built.