Intel shares were under pressure Thursday after President Donald Trump called for the chipmaker’s CEO to resign immediately.

In a Truth Social post, Trump said Intel Chief Executive Lip-Bu Tan “is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem.” Intel dropped in the premarket on the back of that post, last trading 5% lower.

Tan was named as Intel CEO in March. This week, U.S. Republican Senator Tom Cotton questioned his ties to Chinese companies and referenced a past criminal case involving Cadence Design, where Tan was CEO until 2021, Reuters reported.

Cotton wrote to Intel’s chair to “express concern about the security and integrity of Intel’s operations and its potential impact on U.S. national security,” Reuters said.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed 100% tariffs on the import of semiconductors has brought major chip names into the spotlight.

Questions linger about how these duties will be implemented: will they apply to the raw chip itself that is imported, or the end product, like a smartphone or laptop? And how much manufacturing needs to actually be done in the U.S.?

Trump said that, if companies are “building in the United States or have committed to build, without question,” then “there will be no charge.”

A number of chip stocks moved higher on Thursday on investor hopes that pledges of U.S. investment and current footprint Stateside may help them avoid the worst of the semiconductor tariffs.

Based on Trump’s comments, here’s a breakdown of the major chip companies in the world and what their operations and investment commitments to the U.S.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s biggest chipmaker, has pledged a total of $165 billion in investments to the U.S.

This includes an ongoing $65 billion investment in advanced chip making operations in Phoenix, Arizona and a fresh $100 billion announced in March.

TSMC shares rose nearly 5% in Taiwan on Thursday, as investors bet the company will ride out the semiconductor tariffs.

Apple on Wednesday said that Samsung would produce image sensors of the iPhone maker out of the Korean tech giant’s facility in Austin, Texas.

Samsung shares also ended the day higher in South Korean trading.

U.S.-headquartered chipmaker GlobalFoundries saw shares surge nearly 10% in premarket trade on Thursday.

The company has a manufacturing footprint in the U.S., but it does not make cutting-edge chips like TSMC. Instead, it makes less advanced products that are widely used across various industries.

On Wednesday, GlobalFoundries announced an agreement with Apple for a “deeper collaboration that will advance semiconductor technologies and strengthen U.S. manufacturing.”

The company said it will “accelerate” investments at its factory in Malta, New York.

Given its U.S. base, investors see GlobalFoundries as a winner of Trump’s semiconductor tariffs.

SK Hynix produces the high-bandwidth memory chips that Nvidia uses in its products. Last year, the South Korean company announced a nearly $4 billion chip packaging facility in the U.S.

Shares of SK Hynix closed more than 1% higher on Thursday.

In April, Nvidia said it plans to produce up to $500 billion of AI infrastructure in the U.S. via its manufacturing partnerships over the next four years.

Its Blackwell AI chips have started production at TSMC’s Phoenix facility.

Nvidia shares were 1% higher in premarket trade.

After months of speculation, U.S. President Donald Trump has divulged more of his semiconductor tariff plans, but his latest threats might raise more questions than answers. 

On Wednesday, Trump said he will impose a 100% tariff on imports of semiconductors and chips, but not for companies that are “building in the United States.”

As semiconductors represent an over $600 billion industry at the heart of the modern digital economy, any potential tariffs hold massive weight. 

However, experts say the President has yet to provide key details on the policy, which will ultimately determine their full impact and targets. 

“It’s still too early to pin down the impact of the tariffs on the semiconductor sector,”  Ray Wang, research director of semiconductors, supply chain and emerging technology at The Futurum Group, told CNBC. 

“The final rule is likely still being drafted and the technical details are far from clear at this point.” 

The U.S. has been working to onshore its semiconductor supply chain for many years now. Since 2020, the world’s largest semiconductor companies such as TSMC and Samsung Electronics have committed hundreds of billions of dollars to building plants in the U.S.

Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Thursday, James Sullivan, Managing Director and Head of Asia Pacific Equity Research at J.P. Morgan, said this could mean most major chip manufacturers receiving exemptions.

If this is the case, the policy could have the effect of “continuing to consolidate market share amongst the largest cap players in the space,” Sullivan said. 

Indeed, shares of major Asian chip companies like TSMC, which has significant investments in the U.S., rose in Thursday morning trading following Trump’s announcement. Early this year, TSMC announced it would expand its investments in the U.S. to $165 billion. 

Shares of South Korea’s Samsung and SK Hynix — which have also invested in the U.S. — were also trading up after a Korean trade envoy reportedly said on radio that the duo would be exempt from the 100% tariffs.

For example, in 2024, the U.S. imported $46.3 billion of semiconductors — only about 1% of all U.S. imports, according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

While Rasgon said tariffs on these imports may be manageable, broader tariffs would be harder to deal with. 

“What we don’t know with [Trump’s] comments on tariffs, is it just raw semiconductors? Are there going to be tariffs on end devices? Are you going to be looking at tariffs on components within end devices?,” Rasgon asked. 

The confusion and questions around semiconductor tariffs were brought to the forefront after the U.S. Department of Commerce started a national security investigation of semiconductor imports in April, just as the sector was exempted from Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs.

The vague language from the Trump administration — though not invoked in the president’s latest proclamations — could theoretically be used to apply broad tariffs to an enormous segment of the electronics supply chain. It’s also unclear on the extent that semiconductor materials and manufacturing equipment used to manufacture chips would fall under the tariffs. 

Another large buyer of semiconductors in the U.S. are cloud service providers like Amazon Web Services and Google, which are essential to power Washington’s AI plans. 

According to a recent report from ITIF, semiconductors contribute $7 trillion in global economic activity annually by underpinning a range of downstream applications including AI and “big data.”

In a potential sign of American companies seeking to move their chip supply chains into the U.S., Apple CEO Tim Cook, alongside Trump at the White house Wednesday, announced that it will be supplied chips from Samsung’s production plant in Texas. 

The company also announced an additional $100 billion in U.S. investments, raising its total investment commitments in the country to $600 billion over the next four years.