The state of the United States is a major factor in the plans of leaders from many industries that require cleanrooms. With large presences and footprints from pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, as well as hi-tech manufacturing powerhouses like Intel and Nvidia.
What affects the US market will intrinsically affect these sectors. With a new President in the country, there will be huge changes to come that will impact these industries, and therefore their cleanroom construction partners.
Using tariffs has been a big point of discussion with the new Trump administration, with the new President promising sectoral tariffs “starting at” 25% for pharmaceuticals and semiconductor chip imports.
Tariffs are a charge on top of the existing cost for imported products, with the US-based entity paying an increased rate to import the product. The reason for a tariff can be varied, but one of the main ideas is often to promote domestic manufacturing.
Cleanroom facilities take varying lengths of time to build, with semiconductor chip fabs taking many years
Domestic manufacturing in the US is a big target of these tariffs. Pfizer itself has ten manufacturing sites and two distribution centres located in nine different states, whilst Intel has around ten, further investing billions of dollars due to the CHIPS Act. Encouraging companies to buy from these locations instead of from abroad is one of the key desired outcomes of the new tariffs.
There is a catch to this, however. Cleanroom facilities take varying lengths of time to build, with semiconductor chip fabs taking many years to go from inception to operation. This is a major limiting factor with the implementation of domestic manufacturing of both of these key products.
The exact timings of the tariffs on pharmaceutical and semiconductor imports are yet to be determined, but will be hugely impactful on the success of the endeavour.
The other aspect that needs to be considered in planning for the impacts of these tariffs is the construction materials to grow domestic manufacturing. Currently, construction of these facilities may also be subject to cost increases from tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.
Stainless steel is hugely prevalent in cleanroom production environments
For hygienic reasons, stainless steel is hugely prevalent in cleanroom production environments.
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