Donald Trump has less and less tariff regime. After repeated warnings in the market to relax a little, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued guidance late Friday night that introduced new exemptions for smartphones, computers and other electronics, a major exemption for austerity tech companies.
Bloomberg reports that exemptions include popular devices such as iPhones and MacBooks, as well as Android and Windows devices made overseas. It also includes hardware such as hard disks, computer processors, memory chips and graphics cards. Some noted that the exemption does not include video game consoles, which keeps things still surfaced in the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2.
It is worth noting that the exemption applies to universal application, which means that entering the United States will not be subject to 10% global tariffs currently applicable to each country, nor will it be subject to the 145% tariffs currently imposed on China. The exemption was also reviewed until April 5, 2025, so it is pretending that it has not happened in the past week.
The exemption comes a week after another week of extremely turbulent markets, which appears to be pleading with Trump to stop harassing the country’s top trading partner, while the rest of the world is trading partners in the rest of the United States and begins to transfer its funds elsewhere. Almost the only thing that made the market bounce over the past few weeks is the smallest bread crumbs, suggesting that perhaps Trump is not as sensitized as he insists himself.
Trump left a path for investors, suggesting that such exemptions could be listed on Friday, when he told reporters aboard Air Force One that “for obvious reasons, there may be a few exceptions” coming. He didn't say what the obvious reason was, but we could interpret it as “we wanted to stop some of the most profitable companies from bleeding.”
The technology department certainly shows that pain is coming. Apple reportedly took 1.5 million iPhones from Inida to the U.S. to prevent them from being hit by tariffs and warned that prices of their devices could rise soon. With the tariffs in effect, other key technicians, including Asus, Sony and Nividia, have begun to raise retail prices for their devices. Consumers expect these prices to rise, competing for stocking equipment.
Those who may be buying a new phone or computer in the market can now breathe a little relieved, and companies that are ready to disrupt the entire logistics to try to figure out how to avoid the extra cost can also breathe a little relieved.
The exemption does seem to hint at a backtrack of Trump’s position that we can make electronic products in the country. Earlier this week, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Donald Trump “believe that we have the labor, we have the labor, we have the resources” to build an iPhone in the U.S. (This may be theoretically correct, but in reality, experts say the device will cost up to $3,500 in purchases, plus years of building manufacturing infrastructure to build it even can do that. The shocking idea didn’t stick.
