During Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency, he promised that “all” bitcoin (BTC) should be “made in the US.” However, his new tariffs are likely to hurt the US BTC mining industry.
BTC mining depends on specialized computers based around application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) that are specifically optimized for Bitcoin’s hashing algorithm.
These machines are imported, as their production is largely outside the United States, though Bitmain and MicroBT had started setting up production lines in the United States for final assembly. However, it seems these production lines are still dependent on importing various components for the devices.
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Historically, these machines were built in China, but after earlier tariffs during Trump’s first term, the production had moved to other countries, including Malaysia and Indonesia.
Now, with Trump targeting those countries, as well as many others, it’s likely that imports of both finished miners and components for their production will increase in price.
Ethan Vera, the chief operating officer at Luxor, claimed on The Mining Pod several days ago that brokers and miners were chartering planes to try to rush mining devices into the US before these tariffs went into effect.
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BTC mining is a highly competitive global industry and the incentives make it important for miners to seek out jurisdictions where the total costs are lowest. These costs include both the energy costs to operate their machines and the cost to acquire those machines in the first place.
If it becomes more expensive to acquire those machines in the US, then those miners will be outcompeted by others in lower-cost jurisdictions.
This was also the analysis of Hashlabs Mining Chief Executive Jaran Mellerud, who stated that “as machine prices rise in the US, they could paradoxically decrease in the rest of the world.”
Interestingly, before these tariffs were finalized, Trump-affiliated World Liberty Financial signed a deal with Hut8 to launch American Bitcoin. Hut8 provided its ASICs to this venture, avoiding the tariffs that were finalized shortly after.
