[WASHINGTON] US President Donald Trump pledged he will still apply tariffs to phones, computers and popular consumer electronics, downplaying a weekend exemption as a procedural step in his overall push to remake US trade.
The late Friday (Apr 11) reprieve – exempting a range of popular electronics from 125 per cent tariffs on China and a 10 per cent flat rate around the globe – is temporary and a part of the longstanding plan to apply a different, specific levy to the sector. Trump doubled down on the plan on Sunday.
“NOBODY is getting ‘off the hook,’” Trump said in a social media post on Sunday, issued shortly after he finished his Sunday golf game. The exempted products are “just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket’” and the administration will be “taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN”, he added.
Taken together, the comments from Trump and his top trade chiefs on Sunday are a stark reminder of the scope of his planned tariff onslaught. Still, the manoeuvre means weeks, maybe months, without extra tariffs on the array of phones and computers before the specific sectoral tariff on electronics kicks in – one virtually certain to be lower than the 125 per cent rate on China, another level of reprieve. It also opens a window for companies and lobbyists to push for different parameters and exclusions.
The exemptions were published in a US Customs and Border Protection document late Friday, and are a step to shift those products ultimately to a different levy, which Trump has long threatened for semiconductors, without specifying the scope.
Trump already carved out those sectors he plans to specifically target from being hit by both those levies and the across-the-board ones on countries he enacted this month in his “Liberation Day” announcement that triggered a market sell-off.
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The pause on Friday was nonetheless a temporary victory for Apple and other manufacturers who rely on Chinese manufacturing in particular, and the country’s government had welcomed the exemptions and urged Trump to go further.
“This is a small step by the US towards correcting its wrongful action of unilateral ‘reciprocal tariffs’,” the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in a statement posted on its official WeChat account on Sunday. The ministry urged the US to “take a big stride in completely abolishing the wrongful action, and return to the correct path of resolving differences through equal dialogue based on mutual respect”.
But US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and other administration officials said on Sunday it was only a pause before they are shifted to different levies, though those will almost certainly be lower than the 125 per cent rate on China that Trump set last week, and perhaps higher than the 10 per cent rate charged on other countries.
“All those products are going to come under semiconductors, and they are going to have a special focus-type of tariff to make sure that those products get reshored,” Lutnick said on Sunday on ABC’s This Week, “We can’t be relying on China for fundamental things that we need.”
Trump’s latest exemptions cover almost US$390 billion in US imports based on official US 2024 trade statistics, including more than US$101 billion from China, according to data compiled by Gerard DiPippo, associate director of the Rand China Research Centre.
Semiconductor tariffs to come
The White House has long said it would not apply its country tariffs – 125 per cent on China, 10 per cent on nearly every other nation – to sectors that were going to get their own specific levies. Trump has already enacted those sector-specific tariffs for steel, aluminium and autos, while teeing up addition ones on auto parts and copper and pledging yet others on semiconductor chips, pharmaceutical drugs, lumber and maybe critical minerals.
The semiconductor tariffs are “coming in probably a month or two”, Lutnick said. He said a notice will be published in the federal registry this week related to semiconductors, but he did not elaborate. The administration will likely need to launch a so-called Section 232 investigation as a next step, which would require a report within 270 days and then open the door to tariffs.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer also pledged that the products would face a different tariff.
“It’s not that they won’t be subject to tariffs geared at reshoring. They will just be under a different regime. It’s shifting from one bucket of tariffs to a different bucket of potential tariffs,” Greer said on Sunday on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.
Friday’s exclusion was the first time that the Trump administration published a detailed list of what products it thinks fall under the umbrella of semiconductors, which are used in electronics of all kinds. They are not required to apply the sectoral tariff to the same list, but Lutnick indicated they would.
In some ways, Trump’s on Friday exclusions were an announcement of the products that will ultimately be under the “semiconductor” sectoral tariff.
It’s not clear what tariff rate the administration would apply to semiconductors and products it covers under that tax, but they have been 25 per cent so far on other industries. Those Section 232 tariffs may prove more permanent than Trump’s country rates, which are based on a more vulnerable legal authority and which he’s said he will negotiate.
The tariff reprieve does not extend to a separate Trump levy on China – a 20 per cent duty applied to pressure Beijing to crack down on fentanyl, including the shipment of precursor materials. Other previously existing levies, including those that predate Trump’s current term, also appear unaffected.
Trump, in his social media post on Sunday, reiterated that the 20 per cent rate still applies.
In China, “everyone pays at least 20 per cent, and these particular components are being put through a separate process controlled by the Department of Commerce, which is the 232”, Lutnick told ABC. BLOOMBERG
