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 reprieve — exempting a range of popular electronics from 125% tariffs on China and a 10% 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 Sunday.
“NOBODY is getting ‘off the hook,’” Trump said in a social media post 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.
Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One his decisions will come soon, indicating that details on a tariff rate for semiconductors would be announced in the coming week.
Yet Trump also signaled an openness to talks with companies over the scope of his sectoral tariff on semiconductors and products like iPhones and tablets that rely on them. “We’ll be discussing it, but we’ll also talk to companies,” he said. “You have to show a certain flexibility. Nobody should be so rigid.”
Taken together, the comments from Trump and his top trade chiefs Sunday are a stark reminder of the scope of his planned tariff onslaught. Still, the maneuver 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% 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 selloff.
The pause Friday was nonetheless a temporary victory for Apple Inc. 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 toward 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 dialog based on mutual respect.”
But US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and other administration officials said Sunday it was only a pause before they’re shifted to different levies, though those will almost certainly be lower than the 125% rate on China that Trump set last week, and perhaps higher than the 10% rate charged on other countries.
“All those products are going to come under semiconductors, and they’re going to have a special focus-type of tariff to make sure that those products get reshored,” Lutnick said 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 $390 billion in US imports based on official US 2024 trade statistics, including more than $101 billion from China, according to data compiled by Gerard DiPippo, associate director of the Rand China Research Center.
Semiconductor Tariffs To Come
The White House has long said it would not apply its country tariffs — 125% on China, 10% 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, aluminum 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.
Trump, aboard Air Force One late Sunday, said the tariffs would be in place “in the not too distant future.”
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 didn’t 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 the products would face a different tariff.
“It’s not that they won’t be subject to tariffs geared at reshoring. They’ll just be under a different regime. It’s shifting from one bucket of tariffs to a different bucket of potential tariffs,” Greer said 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 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’ve been 25% 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% 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 Sunday, reiterated that the 20% rate still applies.
On China, “everyone pays at least the 20% and these particular components are being put through a separate process controlled by the Department of Commerce which is the 232,” Lutnick told ABC.
(Updates with Trump comments on flexibility starting in fifth paragraph.)
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