🔸🔹🔸The high tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump in 2025 and 2026, or threatened to be expanded, negatively impacted Bitcoin mining both directly and indirectly, primarily increasing import costs for ASIC mining equipment (equipment dominated by Chinese manufacturers such as Bitmain, MicroBT, and Canaan) by 20-145%; this significantly increased the capital expenditure (CAPEX) of US-based miners, making it difficult to purchase new machinery, slowing hash rate growth, and eroding the profitability of some small-to-medium-sized operations.

🔹🔸🔹 Tariffs applied to imports, particularly from China and Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia), also affected additional cost items such as electrical infrastructure (transformers, power distribution units) and raw materials (aluminum, electronic components), inflating total mining costs by 10-40%. Under this pressure, US miners took emergency measures such as chartering private jets to stockpile beforehand, while some considered shifting operations to lower-cost and tariff-unaffected regions like Canada, Russia, Kazakhstan, or Ethiopia, thus accelerating the evolution of the global hash rate distribution away from US dominance (around 35-40%) and towards a more balanced structure. However, this negative short-term effect can be offset in the long term by Chinese manufacturers (Bitmain, MicroBT, Canaan) establishing local production facilities in the US (to avoid tariffs and get closer to the US market); this strategic shift could lower mining costs by encouraging cheaper and "domestic" ASIC production in the US, and there is a prevailing view that the tariffs, which contradict Trump's vision of "making the US a Bitcoin mining hub," could ironically strengthen the domestic industry. However, while the indirect pressure on energy costs (electricity prices) remained limited, overall tariffs accelerated consolidation in the mining sector, enabling efficient and large-scale players (e.g., Riot, CleanSpark) to survive, and triggering a diversification of supply chains that could make Bitcoin's decentralized nature more resilient to geopolitical risks.