In every week that noticed practically $10 trillion wiped from international markets, AI finds itself caught up in probably the most intense financial storm of residing reminiscence.
Since Trump introduced his cardboard placard of tariffs final week, the market response has been brutal, and tech shares are bearing the brunt.
Apple shares have fallen practically 20% for the reason that tariff announcement, with the corporate closely uncovered to Chinese language manufacturing. Tesla dropped one other 5% on Monday alone, and NVIDIA equally, now buying and selling at 25% decrease than the start of the yr.
AI’s spectacular rise has been constructed on the muse of a borderless economic system. The trade thrives on international provide chains – Taiwanese chips, Chinese language meeting, European analysis facilities, and American enterprise capital – all working in relative concord.
Taiwan has been hit notably exhausting, slapped with a 32% tariff that despatched its inventory market into its worst nosedive ever, plunging practically 10% in days. By Tuesday, Taiwan’s Overseas Minister Lin Chia-lung was scrambling to rearrange negotiations with the US, telling reporters they’re “prepared for talks at any time.”
It’s not nearly semiconductors, which acquired a brief reprieve from tariffs. The large information facilities powering ChatGPT and different AI providers depend on a world provide community for every thing from cooling techniques to energy gear to building supplies – all primarily now topic to tariffs.
Non-semiconductor elements symbolize as much as one-third of information heart prices, Gil Luria of D.A. Davidson & Co. defined to Fortune, including ominously that the semiconductor exemption “was not meant to be everlasting.”
China, in the meantime, has retaliated with its personal tariffs whereas its state media produces AI-generated movies mocking Trump’s financial insurance policies.
Did ChatGPT design Trump’s tariffs?
Right here’s the place the story takes a weird flip. Shortly after Trump unveiled his tariffs, economist James Surowiecki seen one thing peculiar: the method behind the tariff calculations seemed surprisingly acquainted.
Because it seems, in case you ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Grok for “a straightforward strategy to resolve commerce deficits,” all of them advocate primarily the identical technique – to divide a rustic’s commerce deficit with the US by their exports to the US. That’s remarkably just like what the White Home seems to have accomplished.
Simply discovered the place these faux tariff charges come from. They didn’t truly calculate tariff charges + non-tariff limitations, as they are saying they did. As a substitute, for each nation, they simply took our commerce deficit with that nation and divided it by the nation’s exports to us.
So we… https://t.co/PBjF8xmcuv
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) April 2, 2025
“That is extraordinary nonsense,” Surowiecki famous, with different economists rapidly piling on criticism of what seems to be overly primitive calculations.
Shifting the blame to China
As markets tanked, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent instructed Tucker Carlson it wasn’t the tariffs inflicting the market crash, however China’s DeepSeek AI platform.
“For everybody who thinks these market declines are all based mostly on the President’s financial insurance policies, I can inform you that this market decline began with the Chinese language AI announcement of DeepSeek,” Bessent claimed. “It’s extra a Magazine 7 drawback, not a MAGA drawback.”
When Bessent refers back to the “Magazine 7,” he’s speaking concerning the “Magnificent Seven,” Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, and Tesla, which have collectively pushed a lot of the market’s current features.
The timeline, nonetheless, tells a distinct story. World markets have been comparatively steady till Trump’s tariff announcement on Wednesday, after which they instantly plunged throughout the board. DeepSeek’s newest model was launched in January, months earlier than the present disaster started, and markets confirmed no comparable response at the moment.
Market figures from different industries additionally undermine Bessent’s declare. The Dow Jones dropped 1,679 factors in a single day following Trump’s tariff announcement – the biggest single-day level drop since 2020. The timing and magnitude of the decline depart little doubt concerning the main catalyst.
What comes subsequent?
Regardless of the market meltdown, Trump exhibits no indicators of backing down. When requested about pausing the tariffs, he mentioned bluntly, “We’re not that.”
Not everybody believes AI will undergo long-term injury, with some claiming AI is nearly ‘tariff-proof’ as a result of its inherently borderless nature and long-term strategic significance.
Nonetheless, right now’s frontier fashions run on warehouse-sized information facilities stuffed with specialised chips, cooling techniques, and energy gear sourced from everywhere in the world. Plus, regardless of years of speak about reshoring semiconductor manufacturing, the US stays closely depending on international chip manufacturing.
The CHIPS Act was supposed to vary that, however new home fabs are nonetheless years away from significant manufacturing, a warning signal that re-shoring is famously gradual and painful.
Both method, for now, the AI trade – and nearly each different – watches and waits, hoping that market turmoil might be momentary and continuity in some kind will ultimately prevail.
