South Korean minister says South Korea and the US are continuing chip tariff talks, according to Yonhap

Sector-specific tariff negotiations between Washington and an allied exporter follow a familiar sequence in trade episodes of this kind: an announcement of intent, a negotiating window in which headline flow dominates, and then either an exemption, a quota-style arrangement, or imposition with carve-outs. Semiconductors have occupied a distinct lane in recent trade disputes, treated as strategic rather than ordinary goods, and talks framed as continuing rather than concluded have historically kept the affected names trading on headline risk rather than fundamentals until terms land. The actors here have prior form: US administrations have used tariff threats as leverage to extract onshore investment commitments, and Seoul has typically responded by pairing negotiation with pledges of expanded US fab spending. The transmission channel runs through margin assumptions for the Korean memory and foundry complex and through the supply-chain read-across to US equipment and design peers, with the split between chips destined for US end-markets and those routed through third countries the key distinction once any framework emerges. Worth noting is that ministerial comments of this sort are posture, not policy: the follow-ons that matter are any US side readout, a defined timeline, and whether autos or other Korean export categories get folded into the same track.