Will US tariffs push data centers for large model training offshore?
One aspect of the tariffs will be that it’s more costly to import chips into the United States. Does anybody understand data center economics and the tariffs policy well enough to know whether this will push new data center creation needed to train large models into other states?
SemiAnalysis has an article about the current tarrifs:
https://semianalysis.com/2025/04/10/tariff-armageddon-gpu-loopholes/
In particular, they claim that GPU servers for US datacenters are mostly assembled in Mexico and will be exempt due to USMCA. They estimate that total TCO for GPU cloud operators due to tarrifs will be <2%.
So it seems, that at least for the current set of tarrifs and if you trust SemiAnalysis, the answer is no.
Any such question has to account for the uncertainty about what US trade policies and tariffs will be tomorrow, let alone by the time anyone currently planning a data center will actually be finished building it.
Also, when you say offshore, do you mean in other countries, or actually in the ocean? Assuming the former, I think that would imply using the data center by anyone in the US would be an import of services. If this starting happening at scale, I would expect the current administration to immediately begin applying tariffs to those services.
@Garrett Baker Yes electronics are exempt (for now?) but IIUC all the other stuff (HVAC, electrical, etc.) that goes into the data center is not, and that’s often a majority or at least a high proportion of total costs.
Note that “smartphones, computers and more electronics” are exempt. I’d guess this would include (or end up including) datacenters. The details of the exemption are here.