AMD, Nvidia downplay Trump tariff impacts

AMD and Nvidia have downplayed the potential impact of the latest round of import tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump on China on their respective businesses, while confirming that their customers are working to mitigate the impact by moving assembly work from China to other non-US nations.

US President Donald Trump began an active trade war with China in March this year by signing a memo placing tariffs on around $60 billion in imports from the country. Earlier this month, the tariffs were extended to place a 10 percent levy on $200 billion of imports through to the end of the year, extending to 25 percent in 2019 - values which have already been claimed to be driving up the pricing of Nvidia's recently-launched GeForce RTX graphics card family in the US.

AMD and Nvidia, though, have downplayed the effect of the tariffs on their own businesses, while confirming that their customers - the graphics board partners, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and original design manufacturers (ODMs) who buy their processors - are having to take action to mitigate their impact.

Speaking to CNBC, AMD claimed to be 'working closely with our customers and partners to mitigate potential impacts related to the tariffs on AMD-based products,' while Nvidia went further with the confirmation that 'most of our partners have moved or are moving their impacted assembly work to Taiwan and Mexico, which aren't affected by the tariffs.' In both cases, the companies claimed of little direct impact to their own business - it being the company's customers, and the end-users that form their customers' customers, who are the ones bearing the brunt of the cost.

The trade war has already claimed its first victim in the technology industry: CaseLabs blamed its insolvency on a combination of the first round of tariffs and the default of an unnamed account.