While the tariffs imposed by US president Donald Trump remain in abeyance for 90-days, US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said last week that smartphones, computers and some other electronics, just exempted from steep tariffs on imports from China, would face separate new duties along with semiconductors within the next two months.
Lutnick’s comments on ABC’s, This Week, during which he flagged the incoming levies on critical technology products, mark the latest twist in Trump’s tariff plans, which have upended the global trading order.
On April 11, the Trump administration granted exclusions from the steep reciprocal tariffs on smartphones and a set of other electronics products, a move seen as a big break for tech firms such as Apple and Dell that rely on imports from China.
Trump’s back-and-forths on tariffs have kicked off a trade war with China and prompted the wildest swings on Wall Street since 2020. The benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 index is down more than 10 per cent since Trump took office on January 20.
Lutnick said the US president would enact “a special focus-type of tariff” on smartphones, computers and other electronics products in a month or two, alongside sectoral tariffs targeting semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. He said those new levies would fall outside Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs, under which levies on Chinese imports climbed to 125 per cent.
“He is saying they are exempt from the reciprocal tariffs, but they are included in the semiconductor tariffs which are coming in probably a month or two,” said Lutnick, who predicted that the levies would bring production of those products to the US. “Those are things that are national security, that we need to be made in America.” Lutnick appeared to go beyond what was communicated the previous week when a White House official said to the media that Trump would launch a new national security trade investigation into semiconductors soon that could lead to other new tariffs.
Beijing increased its own tariffs on US imports to 125 per cent, striking against Trump’s tariffs. Last week China said it was evaluating the impact of the exclusions for the technology products implemented. “The bell on the tiger’s neck can only be untied by the person who tied it,” China’s Ministry of commerce said.
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, who endorsed Trump’s run for president but who has criticised the tariffs, called on him to pause the broad and steep reciprocal tariffs on China for three months, as he did for most countries – but Trump kept the 125 per cent on China.
US senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, criticised the latest revision to Trump’s tariff plan, which economists have warned could dent economic growth and fuel inflation. She said: “There is no tariff policy – only chaos and corruption.” In a notice to shippers on 11 April, the US Customs and Border Protection agency published a list of tariff codes excluded from the import taxes. It featured 20 product categories, including computers, laptops, disc drives, semiconductor devises, memory chips and flat panel displays.
For the Chinese imports, the exclusion of the tech products applies only to Trump’s reciprocal tariffs. The US president’s prior 20 per cent duties on all Chinese imports, which he said were related to the fentanyl crisis remain in place.
In an interview on NBC’s Meet The Press, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro said the US has opened an invitation to China to negotiate, but criticised its connection to the lethal fentanyl (a synthetic opioid made in a lab that is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine) supply chain.
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