U.S. government threatens DRAM tariff at the worst time ever

The U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's threat to impose a 100% tariff on foreign DRAM manufacturers could have significant consequences for the computing industry. This threat comes at a time when DRAM prices have already quadrupled in the past year, and any additional tariffs would further increase the costs of upgrading or building PCs, as well as the prices of other products that rely on DRAM, such as cars and smartphones. The stated goal of the tariffs is to encourage domestic chip manufacturing, and recent developments suggest that this is happening, with Micron breaking ground on a new memory fab in New York and TSMC speeding up its plans for a fab in Arizona. However, the Trump administration's tariff policies have been inconsistent, and the current focus seems to be on a proposal to annex Greenland, which is overshadowing the administration's efforts to promote domestic chip manufacturing through tariffs. Overall, the potential DRAM tariff threatens to further exacerbate the already high prices in the computing industry, and the ultimate impact will depend on the administration's follow-through and the industry's ability to adapt to the changing market conditions.