Industry coalition urges Trump administration to take urgent action as AI data centers' extreme memory consumption threatens other industries

A coalition of nine US trade associations has urged the Trump administration to take urgent action in response to a memory chip shortage driven by the explosive growth of AI data centers. Representing... Read original →

The AI data center boom is fracturing the global memory ecosystem. HBM’s insatiable demand—tied to 3nm nodes and EUV lithography—is cannibalizing commodity DRAM output, as Samsung and SK Hynix reallocate mature-node capacity to high-margin AI stacks. This starves automotive and medical sectors of essential LPDDR and standard DRAM. Domestic U.S. fab investments won’t offset this within 24 months: HBM requires CoWoS advanced packaging, overwhelmingly concentrated in Taiwan, China. Any Trump-era allocation mandate risks WTO violations and strains U.S.-Korea semiconductor alignment. Worse, non-AI industries now face cost inflation from forced rationing or price surges. Within 12 months, Washington may classify commercial memory as 'critical infrastructure,' imposing quotas—a dangerous precedent that could accelerate tech decoupling under national security pretexts.