Resolution Details: This question resolves YES if the United States federal government officially implements new tariffs targeting semiconductors imported from Taiwan, with an effective date on or before December 31, 2025.
Resolution Criteria:
The tariffs must be formally announced through official US government channels (e.g., Federal Register, US Trade Representative, Department of Commerce)
The measures must explicitly include semiconductors imported from Taiwan
Clarification 3/4/2025: Tariffs on the whole Taiwanese economy that include semiconducts include the above.
The implementation date must be set for no later than December 31, 2025
Temporary suspensions of existing trade agreements do not count as new tariffs
The tariffs must be broad measures affecting the semiconductor industry, not targeted actions against specific companies (e.g., TSMC)
Resolves YES if a general tariff on Taiwanese imports is applied and it includes semiconductors.
Resolves NO if:
No such tariffs are announced by December 31, 2025
Announced tariffs are scheduled to take effect after December 31, 2025
Proposed tariffs are withdrawn before implementation
Measures are limited to non-tariff trade barriers
Actions only affect other categories of goods from Taiwan
Tariffs are announced but legally challenged and blocked from implementation
1,000People are also trading
I'm N/Aing because I don't want to pollute the epistemic space; the situation is already messy enough. This market is too contentious at this point. Sorry.
Alternative market:
* https://manifold.markets/Dgfold/what-will-be-us-tariffs-on-taiwanes
I think what makes me the most dissatisfied with how this market was run was that the creator did a full 180 on the resolution criteria here, changing it from "measures must explicitly include semiconductors" to "tariffs on the whole economy":
"The measures must explicitly include semiconductors imported from Taiwan
Clarification 3/4/2025: Tariffs on the whole Taiwanese economy that include semiconducts include the above."
This is not a reasonable clarification, and I think most traders were betting on whether or not there would be an explicit tariff on semiconductors.
Imagine a market called
"Will the US impose a sales tax on cigarettes"
In the description it says:
"The tax must explicitly mention cigarettes"
And then the creator changes it midway through the market to:
"Clarification: any sales tax on all sales that include cigarettes will count".
You can see why people would be frustrated by this change, which is both against the spirit of the market and against the original stated criteria that people were betting on.
I'm not speaking in my capacity as a mod here or anything (and now that I look at it I notice I am at a loss so what I'm about to say is manafully advantageous 🤷) but I do think this is a decent case for N/A
@bens I'm currently at breakeven and would profit from a Yes, but I agree this is a reasonable case for N/A.
@Bayesian It's irrelevant anyways since the current Taiwan tariffs explicitly exclude semiconductors. Any semiconductor tariff would be explicit.
Peter Wildeford says GPUs get tariffs but CPUs not..
@jgyou What are your thoughts on this? Like, does it affect your outcome at all? Or do you just mean semiconductors the component itself? I had assumed the latter.
@jgyou Based on your post from a month ago it would sound like a Yes, but I would not be mad at an N/A. Regardless I have reversed my position based on this clarification.
@jgyou I think the clear case for NO is that
1) there are no specific tariffs on semiconductors
2) broad swathes of semiconductors are in fact EXEMPT from the 10% / country-specific tariffs!!
3) the GPUs discussed above are not "semiconductors" but rather, "computing technology that has semiconductor components"... you might as well call them "plastics"
I'll be honest, a YES resolution here at this point would just be incorrect both vis a vis the explicit criteria listed, as well as to the spirit of the question!
I'll repeat, take a step back and view the question from a distance. There are no semiconductor-specific tariffs and in fact semiconductors are specifically exempted from our country's tariffs!
@bens I'll also add that before you made that comment above, the market was at 40%, and now it is at 80%, just on speculation that you will mis-resolve the question.
I read the actual full pdf document and the carveout clearly applies to all the new tariffs, including the 10% baseline. However, I still wouldn’t bet it super low since shit could still happen in this chaos era. But between that and the market maker clarifying that indirect tariff costs won’t count for Yes, I have reversed my position.
@Panfilo This is wild given Trump went into mentioning the Taiwanese tariffs by talking about semiconductors 😭
@MingCat Someone below mentioned that tha $100B investment in American-made chips was probably the bribe that got this carveout, despite semiconductors being specifically threatened in the past.
It sounds to me like a 10% tariff might go into place on the 5th, even though there's a carveout for the higher reciprocal rate on the rest of Taiwain.
FYI, there appears to be a carveout for semiconductors at the moment
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-declares-national-emergency-to-increase-our-competitive-edge-protect-our-sovereignty-and-strengthen-our-national-and-economic-security/
"Some goods will not be subject to the Reciprocal Tariff. These include: (1) articles subject to 50 USC 1702(b); (2) steel/aluminum articles and autos/auto parts already subject to Section 232 tariffs; (3) copper, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and lumber articles; (4) all articles that may become subject to future Section 232 tariffs; (5) bullion; and (6) energy and other certain minerals that are not available in the United States."
@jgyou (this is why I immediately dumped YES at 70% after buying it up to 70%. Gotta read the fine print.)
@jgyou wait WHAT? That goes completely against the spirit of the market. You have EXPLICITLY in the resolution critera:
-"The measures must explicitly include semiconductors imported from Taiwan"
A 10% tariff across all Taiwanese goods does NOT do this.
@bens Yeah, I agree with this … Wish I'd made my own version of this market instead of providing 10k liquidity for this one
@jgyou very clear.
Ironically if Tariff Man introduced semiconductor tariffs that would potentially lower the tariff because specific tariffs currently replace the April 2nd trade deficit tariffs.
@bens @JonasVollmer
The clarification was made 30 days ago, so I can't really feel bad here.
And I disagree. The clarification captures the spirit of the market, which is getting at the fundamental question of whether USA-based companies will suffer from tariffs on semiconductors coming out of Taiwan.
@jgyou I mean, I guess I thought the spirit of the market was whether there would be specific tariffs on semiconductors, not across the board tariffs on all goods. As... the resolution criteria laid out quite explicitly above. But I guess I couldn't read your mind.
@bens If this resolves Yes because Taiwan is implicitly included in the all-country tarriff, while the explicit tarriff on Taiwan explicitly excludes semiconductors then... well, it'll be a letdown for me.
I entered this market when TSMC invested 100bn in the US because I took it as their bribe to get out of tarriffs, and it's looking like I was right about that. But it seems I was wrong to assume there wasn't resolution criteria further down the list which made the second entry inapplicable 😟
@jgyou If they end up clarifying or expanding the carveout to be true 0% for semiconductors, and that holds all year, does that mean a No even if Taiwanese semiconductor prices increase significantly due to tariffs via component tariffs?