1 week Ago By Associated Press
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Trump administration said late Friday that it would exclude electronics like smartphones and laptops from reciprocal tariffs, a move that could help keep the prices down for popular consumer electronics that aren’t usually made in the United States. It would also benefit big tech companies like Apple and Samsung and chip makers like Nvidia, setting the stage for a likely tech stock rally today.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said items like smartphones, laptops, hard drives, flat-panel monitors and some chips would qualify for the exemption.
Machines used to make semiconductors are excluded, too. That means they won’t be subject to the current 145 percent tariffs levied on China or the 10 percent baseline tariffs elsewhere. It’s the latest tariff change by the Trump administration, which has made several U-turns in its massive plan to put tariffs in place on goods from most countries.
Saturday night aboard Air Force One, President Donald Trump told reporters that he would get into more specifics on exemptions today. “We’ve been making a lot of money,” he said. “It’s been the other way around.
Other countries, in particular China, was making a lot of money.” The exemption filed Friday night seemed to reflect the president’s realization that his China tariffs are unlikely to shift more manufacturing of smartphones, computers and other gadgets to the United States anytime soon, if ever, despite the administration’s predictions that the trade war would encourage Apple to make iPhones in the U.S.
for the first time. But that was an unlikely scenario after Apple spent decades building up a finely calibrated supply chain in China. What’s more, it would take several years and cost billions of dollars to build new plants in the U.
S., and then confront Apple with economic forces that could triple the price of an iPhone, threatening to torpedo sales of its marquee product. Trump’s decision to exempt the iPhone and other popular electronics made in China mirrors the similar relief that he gave those products during the trade war of his first term in the White House.
But Trump began his second term seemingly determined to impose the tariffs more broadly this time, triggering a meltdown in the market values of Apple and other technology powerhouses..
