The Component Signal · Issue #4
The Supply Signal #004 — The Pyeongtaek Squeeze and the Korea Tariff Shock
DDR pricing is up sharply on fab re-allocation while a 25% US tariff on Korean electronics rewrites landed-cost models. What to recheck in your BOM this week.
By Mike Kwak, Director · POCONS USA · How we report
Supply Chain Alert: Two Shocks Hitting the Same BOM Line
The Pyeongtaek complex — the swing capacity for global DDR — has shifted wafer starts decisively toward HBM and DDR5, and commodity DDR pricing reflects it. Contract DRAM closed Q1 +95% QoQ, with Q2 guidance at +58–63%. Large OEMs are reporting eight-figure incremental quarterly memory costs; the pass-through to module and system pricing is now unavoidable.
Layered on top is a policy shock: the United States imposed a 25% tariff on Korean electronics effective March 1, 2026. For any component engineered or finished in Korea, landed cost just stepped up by a quarter before a single price negotiation. This is the single most important change to country-of-origin cost modeling in years, and it interacts with the memory squeeze — much of the world's advanced DRAM is Korean-origin.
POCONS USA (San Diego) is built for exactly this: products manufactured in Korea to IATF 16949, with production also in Vietnam, and US operations in San Diego. Shields, clips, and stampings produced in Vietnam carry a different tariff treatment than Korea-origin product. If your shielding BOM was costed assuming Korean origin, the Vietnam production path is a concrete way to recover that 25%.
Audit every line in your BOM for country of origin. Korea-origin parts now carry a 25% US tariff. Where a Vietnam-origin equivalent exists — including POCONS shields and clips — re-quote it. The tariff delta frequently exceeds the unit-price delta.
Price Watch
Quick Hits
- Murata MLCCs — automotive grades on allocation; the April 1 double-digit price hike from Murata and a leading Korean MLCC maker is now in effect, with Yageo following.
- Texas Instruments has raised pricing +15–85% across analog and power lines depending on part family.
- Ocean freight holding elevated near $3,200/FEU on Red Sea diversion routing.
- Infineon MOSFET allocation continues; SiC supply is constrained at the packaging stage, not the wafer.
One Thing
If the Pyeongtaek memory squeeze and the Korea tariff are hitting the same assembly, your fastest cost-recovery lever is not a memory renegotiation — it is moving tariff-exposed mechanical content (shields, clips, stampings) to Vietnam origin. That is a sourcing decision you can execute this quarter.