- Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick warned two large memory chip makers that they need to make chips in the US.
- Lutnick said: “Anyone who wants to build memory has two options: They can pay a 100% tariff or they can build in the United States. That's industrial policy.”
- The result of such a move would be painful for consumers, in addition to some already unpleasant price increases related to laptop and PC memory.
The RAM crisis continues to worsen and we've entered 2026 with an avalanche of bad news about price increases, and the US government is now using its influence, threatening a move that could cause more price misery for consumers.
PC Gamer highlighted a Bloomberg report that cites some stern words for two of the big memory makers from US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
Lutnick warned that memory chip makers from South Korea and Taiwan – that is, SK Hynix and Samsung (not Micron, the third giant present in this space, which is based in the United States) – could face tariffs of up to 100% if they do not invest more in the United States to increase their chip production facilities in the country.
Lutnick said: “Anyone who wants to build memory has two options: They can pay a 100% tariff or they can build in the United States. That's industrial policy.”
In other words, if SK Hynix and Samsung continue to make RAM modules outside the US, in Asia, they could face those tariffs. A 100% tariff would effectively mean a 100% import tax on memory chips coming from abroad, which would of course be a steep price to pay.
The idea, then, is that these two companies increase chip production on US soil to avoid punishing their sales in this market with tariffs. Keep in mind that what the US government wants is for SK Hynix and Samsung to actually make RAM chips in the US (and not simply package the chips made in Asia and then ship them, which is what happens with the manufacturing plants the two companies currently have in the country).
Even Micron doesn't produce much of its total memory chip production in the US, but it does have some manufacturing in the country, and plans to expand it considerably further. In fact, Lutnick made his statement, Bloomberg reported, at the groundbreaking ceremony for a new $100 billion multi-smelter complex Micron is building in New York (part of a $200 billion campaign to build new manufacturing facilities in the United States).
Analysis: How could this affect consumers?
There are some obvious problems here for American consumers, and possibly the government as well.
For starters, if the US were to instigate this 100% tariff measure, who's to say it would have much effect in forcing SK Hynix or Samsung to intervene in terms of expanding US manufacturing? Saying that RAM is a seller's market right now is possibly the understatement of the century in the tech world, so it's not like losing customers in the US is going to hurt these chipmakers or deflate the huge profits they currently enjoy.
Ultimately, however, it's not the memory makers or the laptop or PC makers who will suffer: the real pain will be inflicted by the average American consumer. As noted, the potential threatened measure is effectively a 100% import tax that will simply be passed on directly to the buyer of the piece of technology containing the memory, as all of these cost increases inevitably are.
We could end up in a situation where a 50% price increase with RAM is forecast in the first quarter of 2026, over the next few months, on top of the already miserably large increases seen in the last quarter of 2025. And then, on top of that, American consumers will have to pay more if what is effectively a 100% import tax on memory goes into effect, meaning an increase on top of an increase on top of an increase.
More expensive storage and much more expensive RAM will drive up the price of laptops and desktops alike; GPUs are also affected in this regard (since they have video RAM, which is now also in short supply and therefore more expensive).
It's complicated to assess how this might play out, and will vary greatly from model to model, but theoretical rates could mean laptops are something like 10% more expensive due to additional RAM bill inflation on top of the already steep increases the memory shortage crisis is already causing. High-end laptops and Copilot+ (AI) PCs will be hardest hit as they demand beefier and faster memory configurations.
We are not at the point where the US government is implementing these measures: at the moment they are only threats. But the administration clearly believes that leveraging tariffs works, so it's not inconceivable that Lutnick could go ahead and enforce such measures, assuming some sort of deal can't be reached regarding U.S. investment with memory chip makers outside of Micron.
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