The U.S. Commerce Department is conducting a national security investigation into imports of semiconductor technology and related downstream products, according to a Federal Register notice put online Monday.
The official document — which calls for public comments on the investigation — further confirms that chips and the electronics supply chain will not be excluded from U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff plans despite his statement on Friday that many of those products were exempt from his “reciprocal tariffs.”
As part of the probe, the Commerce Department will investigate the “feasibility of increasing domestic semiconductors capacity” in order to reduce reliance on imports and whether additional trade measures, including tariffs, are “necessary to protect national security.”
The investigation encompasses a wide range of items, including chip components such as silicon wafers, chipmaking equipment, and “downstream products that contain semiconductors.”
Semiconductors play a role in essentially every type of modern electronics, giving the investigation massive implications for Trump’s global trade war as he seeks to boost U.S. manufacturing.
While exemptions have been made on a range of electronic products, Trump and some of his officials said over the weekend that the reprieve was temporary and part of plans to apply separate tariffs to the sector.
The semiconductor investigation — first initiated by the secretary of commerce on April 1 — sets the grounds for such tariffs to come into effect.
First, the Commerce Department will allow for public comments on the investigation to be submitted no later than 21 days from Wednesday.
However, on Sunday, Trump reportedly said he will be announcing new tariff rates on imported semiconductors over the next week, and that flexibility will be shown to certain companies.
On the same day, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told ABC News’ “This Week” that separate tariffs for semiconductors and electronic products were coming in “probably a month or two.”
Trump’s Commerce Department cited the probe under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which can permit the U.S. president to impose tariffs on the grounds of national security.
The justification is being used for a similar investigation on pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients, which was also disclosed on Monday.
The U.S. is heavily dependent on semiconductor technology imported from markets like Taiwan, South Korea, and the Netherlands.
However, for years, Washington has been implementing policies aimed at onshoring more of the semiconductor supply chain, including through industrial policies such as the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act.
Nvidia, the chipmaker powering much of the artificial intelligence boom, announced on Monday a plan to design and build factories that, for the first time, will produce NVIDIA AI supercomputers entirely in the U.S.
Last month, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the world’s largest chip foundry, announced its intention to increase its existing investments in advanced semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. by an additional $100 billion.
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan makes a speech on stage in Taipei, Taiwan May 19, 2025.
Ann Wang | Reuters
President Donald Trump said Monday that he and members of his cabinet met with Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, days after he called on the head of the chipmaker to resign. Intel shares rose 2% in extended trading.
“I met with Mr. Lip-Bu Tan, of Intel, along with Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, and Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “The meeting was a very interesting one. His success and rise is an amazing story. Mr. Tan and my Cabinet members are going to spend time together, and bring suggestions to me during the next week. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
An Intel spokesperson confirmed the meeting.
“Earlier today, Mr. Tan had the honor of meeting with President Trump for a candid and constructive discussion on Intel’s commitment to strengthening U.S. technology and manufacturing leadership,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.
Tan has been an Intel director since 2022, and in March he replaced Pat Gelsinger as CEO. Last week Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., questioned Tan’s ties to China. Cotton brought up a past criminal case involving Cadence Design, where Tan had been CEO, and asked whether Intel required Tan to divest from positions in chipmakers linked to the Chinese Communist Party, the People’s Liberation Army and any other concerning entities in China.
Trump’s latest message marks a stark change in tone from last week. In a Truth Social post on Thursday, the president wrote that Tan “is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem.”
Intel said in a comment later that day that the company, directors and Tan are “deeply committed to advancing U.S. national and economic security interests.”
The Trump administration has taken a heavy hand in the business world, particularly in the semiconductor market, as the U.S. battles with China for supremacy in artificial intelligence. Over the weekend, Nvidia agreed to pay the federal government a 15% cut in return for receiving export control licenses that will allow it to once again sell its H20 chip to China and Chinese companies. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited Trump in the White House on Friday.
President Trump on Monday said that he initially asked Nvidia for a 20% cut of the chipmaker’s sales to China, but the number came down to 15% after Huang negotiated with him.
“I said, ‘listen, I want 20% if I’m going to approve this for you, for the country,'” Trump said at a news conference in Washington, D.C.
Tan, 65, took over Intel after the struggling chipmaker had failed to gain significant traction in the AI market, which Nvidia dominates, while it was burning cash to build its foundry business for chip manufacturing.
Tan was born in Malaysia and raised in Singapore before moving to the U.S. and receiving a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He said in late July that his first few months as Intel’s CEO had not been easy, with layoffs and cuts to the foundry division.
Intel canceled plans for manufacturing sites in Germany and Poland and would slow down development in Ohio, he told employees.
“Turning the company around will take time and require patience,” Tan said on a conference call with analysts in July. “We have a lot to fix in order to move the company forward.”
Intel shares are up 3% this year as of Monday’s close. The S&P 500 is up 8.4%.
StubHub, the ticketing marketplace that spun out of eBay in 2020, has resumed its plans to go public and is now aiming to hold its IPO next month, CNBC has learned.
The company originally paused its IPO plans in April as the stock market was reeling from President Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs. The decision came after StubHub submitted its prospectus in March indicating it would list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “STUB.”
StubHub now expects to kick off its IPO roadshow after Labor Day, Sept. 1, and make its debut later in the month, according to a source familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the discussions are confidential.
The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
StubHub also filed an updated IPO prospectus on Monday. It reported revenue growth in the first quarter of 10% from a year earlier to $397.6 million. Operating income came in at $26.8 million for the period, after the company lost $883,000 in the year-ago period, but its net loss widened to $35.9 million from $29.7 million a year ago.
The IPO market has come to life in recent months after an extended dry spell due to high inflation and rising interest rates. A flurry of startups have made their public debuts, including rocket maker Firefly Aerospace, design software company Figma, crypto firm Circle and AI infrastructure provider CoreWeave. Bullish, the cryptocurrency exchange that counts Peter Thiel as an investor, also filed its IPO prospectus last month.
StubHub has been a longtime player in the ticketing industry since its launch in 2000. It was purchased by eBay for $310 million in 2007, but was reacquired by its co-founder Eric Baker in 2020 for $4 billion through his new company Viagogo.
The company had sought a $16.5 billion valuation before it began the IPO process, CNBC previously reported. StubHub didn’t provide an expected pricing range for its shares in the filing.
As it prepares to go public, StubHub is contending with hefty competition in the online ticketing market. In addition to Ticketmaster, which is owned by Live Nation, StubHub is up against secondary market companies, including Vivid Seats, SeatGeek and TicketNetwork
For the first quarter, StubHub reported gross merchandise sales of $2.08 billion, up 15% from a year prior. That was a slowdown from 47% expansion the previous quarter. StubHub said GMS, or the total value paid by buyers for tickets and fulfillment, builds in each quarter and that initial sales for major concert tours typically occur near the end of the year.
U.S. President Donald Trump (L) listens as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks in the Cross Hall of the White House during an event on “Investing in America” on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Monday said that he initially asked Nvidia for a 20% cut of the chipmaker’s sales to China, but the number came down to 15% after CEO Jensen Huang negotiated with him.
The comments came after news broke over the weekend that Nvidia agreed to pay the federal government a 15% cut in return for receiving export control licenses that will allow it to once again sell the H20 chip to China and Chinese companies. Nvidia’s Huang visited Trump in the White House on Friday.
“I said, ‘listen, I want 20% if I’m going to approve this for you, for the country,'” Trump said in a press conference in Washington.
Trump said that Nvidia’s H20 is an “old chip that China already has” and is “obsolete.” He compared the H20 chip to Nvidia’s current fastest artificial intelligence chip, which is called Blackwell, and said that he wouldn’t allow those to be sold to China without significant downgrades, such as a 30% to 50% reduction in performance.
“The Blackwell is super-duper advanced. I wouldn’t make a deal with that,” Trump said, adding that it was possible to make a deal for a “somewhat enhanced in a negative way” version of Blackwell.
“That’s the latest and the greatest in the world. Nobody has it. They won’t have it for five years,” Trump said.
One reason for the U.S. export controls is fear that providing advanced chips to China could allow the foreign power to leapfrog the U.S. in AI capabilities. Many have said that could pose a threat to the national security of the U.S.
Trump said that China already has chips with some similar capabilities to the H20.
Huang has said that it is better for U.S. national security if Chinese AI developers use U.S. technology, and that denying them access to Nvidia chips would actually encourage the Chinese chip industry to develop and catch up.
“He’s selling a essentially old chip,” Trump said. “Huawei has a similar chip.”
The H20 is a Chinese-specific chip that has had its performance slowed down. It is related to Nvidia’s H100 and H200 chips that are used in the U.S. The H20 was introduced after the Biden administration implemented export controls on AI chips in 2023.
In April, the Trump administration said it would require a license to export the H20 chip, and in May, Huang said that “effectively closed” the market off to Nvidia. Huang said that Nvidia was expecting to sell about $8 billion in H20 chips in the July quarter before sales were stopped.
“While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide,” an Nvidia spokesperson told CNBC on Monday.
Trump on Monday also said that Huang plans to visit him again to negotiate export licenses for the Blackwell chips.
“I think he’s coming to see me again about that,” Trump said.
A White House official confirmed to CNBC that AMD, the second-place AI chip maker, will also pay 15% to receive an export license for its China-focused AI chip, the Instinct MI308.