短路：半导体关税将如何损害美国经济和数字行业的领导地位（英）

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION FOUNDATION |MAY 2025CONTENTSKey Takeaways...................................................................................................................... 1Introduction.......................................................................................................................... 2Modeling the Economic Impact of Possible U.S. Semiconductor Tariffs ......................................3Economic Analysis ............................................................................................................. 5Revenue Analysis ............................................................................................................... 8The Implications of Tariffs on Data Centers............................................................................10Importance of Semiconductors in Data Centers ...................................................................12Impact of Data Centers on the U.S. Economy......................................................................15Case Study: Northern Virginia ........................................................................................ 15Downstream Effects on U.S. Manufacturing Industries............................................................16Case Study: U.S. Automobile Industry................................................................................ 16U.S. Semiconductor Manufacturing ................................................................................... 18Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 18Endnotes............................................................................................................................ 19INTRODUCTIONSemiconductors represent the heartbeat of the modern global digital economy, a $627 billionindustry in 2024 (that’s expected to grow to a $1 trillion industry by the end of this decade) thatstimulates another $7 trillion in global economic activity annually by underpinning a range ofdownstream applications such as artificial intelligence (AI) and big data.1Semiconductors power—both literally, through power management, and figuratively, through their computational andinformation processing capacity—virtually every modern device, from IT products such ascomputers and smartphones to manufactured goods such as autos, appliances, and medicaldevices. Semiconductors constitute a “capital good” that is foundational to the ability ofenterprises and nations alike to innovate and compete in the modern global digital economy.Moreover, semiconductors underpin American leadership across a wide range of digital industriesfrom AI and data centers to quantum computing to Internet search and e-commerce.Revitalizing U.S. semiconductor manufacturing is undoubtedly a vitally important goal. Thebipartisan 2022 CHIPS Act stimulated investments in U.S. semiconductor research anddevelopment (R&D) and manufacturing that are poised to see the U.S. manufacture nearly 30percent of the world’s leading-edge semiconductor chips by the end of this decade, up fromvirtually nil in 2022.2Since that year, private enterprises have announced $540 billion insemiconductor and electronics industry investment through over 100 projects across 28 states,including plans to launch 17 new semiconductor fabs in the United States.3This points to howeffective innovation, R&D, and tax policy alongside regulatory reform, skills development, andcollaborative investments can and have already led America down the path to significantlyrevitalized U.S. semiconductor manufacturing. PAGE 24 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION FOUNDATION |MAY 2025PAGE 3The second Trump administration is undoubtedly justified in wishing to continue turbochargingU.S. semiconductor manufacturing and making this a national priority. The administration hassuggested it wants to impose tariffs on U.S. imports of semiconductors in order to induce a shift incompanies’ semiconductor manufacturing activities to the United States. But placing blankettariffs on U.S. semiconductor imports—at 10 percent, 25 percent, or higher levels—would becounterproductive to this objective, while dampening U.S. economic growth, raising costs forhouseholds, and compromising the downstream competitiveness of every U.S. manufacturingindustry that depends on semiconductors. Blanket tariffs on semiconductors would work, de facto,as a tax on capital formation. Moreover, they would be particularly pernicious because they wouldrepresent a tax on a non-readily substitutable good that would immediately propagate across alldownstream products that use semiconductors. Moreover, because economic research shows thatconsumption of information and communication technology (ICT) goods is considerably priceelastic, the higher prices that result from tariffs would decrease consumption of these goods,leading to a decline in America’s capital stock of productivity