Smartphones, computers, flash drives, semiconductors and solar cells will be exempt from the Trump administration’s wide-ranging tariffs on China and other nations, according to guidance from U.S Customs and Border Protection released late Friday night.
The policy is a boon to U.S. tech companies such as Apple, which produces most of iPhones in China.
Tech companies, and the net worth of their billionaire CEOs, were among those hardest hit when markets tanked on the tariff announcement. But, now Trump appears to be offering a helping hand by exempting some products from the 125 percent tariff he left on China.
A handful of tech stocks such as Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Netflix, Amazon, Meta and Google parent Alphabet make up over a quarter of the value of the S&P 500 at any given time — and all of these companies would face major financial challenges if global electronics supplies were hit with sustained tariffs.
The Friday announcement is the latest sudden adjustment in a tariff policy that’s changed every few days, after Trump announced on Wednesday a 90-day pause on a series of “reciprocal” tariffs on U.S. trading partners that rattled financial markets, while increasing tariffs on China to an effective rate of 145 percent and maintaining a baseline 10 percent tariffs on all countries that hadn’t retaliated against the U.S.
Despite attempting to soften the financial blow of the tariff agenda, some fear the policies have set the U.S. on a course for a recession.
Does that include 3d printers? jfc
… does the research no
I’m sure all the “now we are gonna manufacture iPhones in the US!” conservatives will raise their displeasure with this any day now.
Coward
Trump saw that Switch 2 price and knew he could not afford it.
It’s becoming more and more clear that all these conflicting announcements are to allow Trump and his cronies to profit off insider trading. Kind of insane how blatant it is, short the market, announce tariffs, sell the short, pause the tariffs (except for China), buy tech stock, announce tech will be exempt, they gotta be making crazy bank.
That’s the fun part, people might think the big bougies will choose democrats with their backtobrunchism continuation of imperialism, but the line not only needs to go up but accelerate, and it’s been 5 years from last biggest transfer of wealth up in history, so they are restless again and perfectly willing to tear the copper from walls.
I agree with the way you think brother
i think its that, and its also feeling for what they can get away with.
this renders trump’s tariffs almost completely moot.
I wouldn’t go that far. China makes something like 80% of the intermediate products used in “American” manufacturing, so I’d still expect price increases across the board.
Assuming they ever start collecting the tariff.
making sure completely manufactured commodities can be easily exported to the imperial core but not raw/intermediate materials is such a JDPON move
It doesn’t for local businesses, so effectively he created these tariffs for nothing, the original purpose is now unable to be realised and the aftereffects will lead to bankruptcy of smaller businesses and companies will prefer to open factories literally everywhere else
Yeah. I backed a board game recently on Kickstarter poor guy shared in a new update he got hit with a 60k charge bringing over stock for a previous release. Like shit man that’s awful for a small business.
Trump achieved a short term goal with the insider trading tactic. Let’s see if he does it again.
Yeah this is the headline to be honest. I kinda assumed he was too thick so maybe it was somebody else’s idea but whatever. Looks like that was the play afaict
