In a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. wants more domestic production of the memory chips essential to AI, and are looking to use tariffs to make that happen. The U.S. currently has just one commercial memory production facility, while the advanced memory used for AI remains dependent on Asian manufacturing. Meaningful U.S. production is still years away.

For now, Micron still needs to send what it produces in the U.S. to Asia for final-step packaging to create high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, which is needed for AI training and usage. Micron plans to bring HBM packaging capabilities to the U.S., but only after it completes its second plant in Idaho in late 2028.

This lag on production is important. Memory prices are rising as AI infrastructure consumes current capacity, while fabs take years and billions to build. Tariffs may encourage longer-term investment, but with tariffs to incentivize the transition, costs will likely rise even more. Read the full article here.