President Donald Trump has spared iPhone, laptops and other electronics from his brutal China tariffs in surprise move.
The moves gives the likes of Apple and Samsung a major win while Americans dodge massive price hikes.
Under the unexpected tariff exclusions, quietly revealed late Friday by US Customs and Border Protection, the gadgets will avoid Trump’s 125 percent import tax on Chinese goods – and even his sweeping 10 percent global tariff.
The list of spared items includes smartphones, laptop computers, hard drives, memory chips, and processors – all tech essentials that are rarely made in the United States.
Experts say it would take years to ramp up domestic production, if it happens at all. More than 80 percent of all Apple products are made in China — including a staggering 80% of iPads and over half of all Mac computers, according to data from Evercore ISI.
In the days following Trump’s tariff announcement, Apple saw $640 billion wiped from its market value.
But it is not clear if the tariff timeout is permanent. The White House’s move appears to stem from technical rules that stop overlapping tariffs – meaning the products could still face new, smaller levies in the near future.
The tariff reprieve — first reported by Bloomberg on Saturday morning — may be temporary, as the exclusions may soon be replaced by a different, likely lower, tariff for China.
China is preparing for a ‘prolonged economic warfare’ with Donald Trump (pictured) after the president added additional tariffs on Beijing, while announcing a pause for other trading partners
Semiconductors, in particular, remain a big question mark. Trump has vowed to slap a sector-specific tariff on them but has so far held back. His administration’s latest carveouts seem to align with that delay – for now.
The Communist nation – under President Xi Jinping (pictured) has spent years fostering a strategy that transitioned from building housing to $1.9trillion constructing factories to make cheap goods for export, seeing them rise 13 percent and 17 percent in 2023 and 2024
Trump’s current industry-focused tariffs sit at 25 percent, but sources say it’s unclear what rate semiconductors and chipmaking tools could ultimately face.
China and the US are in the middle of a trader war.
On Thursday, China threatened to unleash $1.9 trillion ‘tsunami’ on the world in drawn-out economic warfare after Trump hiked tariffs
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