US Customs and Border Safety on Friday evening printed a listing of merchandise excluded from Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, together with smartphones, computer systems and reminiscence chips, together with different digital gadgets and elements. However in an interview with ABC Information’ Jonathan Karl on Sunday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick mentioned the transfer doesn’t suggest these merchandise will likely be exempt from tariffs altogether — they’re simply getting their very own class. “These merchandise are going to be a part of the semiconductor sectoral tariffs, that are coming,” Lutnick mentioned.
All of it comes shortly after Trump imposed a 125 % tariff on items from China, which the administration confirmed to CNBC and different retailers is along with the 20 % tariff put in place earlier this 12 months, bringing it to a complete of 145 %. Trump had beforehand introduced larger reciprocal tariffs for different nations, too, however walked this again with a 90-day “pause” earlier this week. The pause doesn’t apply to China, although, and there’s nonetheless a ten % tariff on imports from nearly all nations. Electronics imports particularly are anticipated to be hit laborious by the brand new guidelines, and we’ve already seen corporations like Nintendo and Razer altering up their plans round upcoming product launches within the US.
The newly printed exclusions would exempt many gadgets and components from each the ten % world tariff and the steeper tariff on China, in line with the discover printed on Friday. Lutnick instructed ABC Information’ Jonathan Karl that, in doing this, the president was “simply ensuring everybody understood that every one of those merchandise are exterior the reciprocal tariffs and they’ll have their very own separate approach of being thought-about.” The transfer is supposed to “ensure that these merchandise get reshored,” Lutnick mentioned, or in different phrases, made in America. “So what he’s doing is, he’s saying they’re exempt from the reciprocal tariffs however they’re included within the semiconductor tariffs, that are coming in in all probability a month or two,” Lutnick mentioned.
Replace, April 13 2025, 1:43PM ET: This story has been up to date to incorporate new details about a separate semiconductor tariff from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that was shared in an ABC Information interview on Sunday.
