Trump Excludes Cell Phones, Computers and Chips From His Tariff War
US President Donald J. Trump (C) listens to remarks during a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, Photo: EFE/EPA/SHAWN THEW / POOL
April 12, 2025 Hour: 3:26 pm
According to the notice issued by the United States Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP), the Donald Trump administration decided to exempt mobile phones, processors, hard drives, computers and chips from the “reciprocal tariffs” imposed by the White House.
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The new CBP guideline for collecting import duties also includes a listing of some 20% electronic components and devices, including semiconductor chips, flat panel television screens, pendrives and memory cards.
This exemption, according to this CBP document published in recent hours, will apply to those products imported into the U.S. and which have entered the United States or left the warehouses at their places of origin as from 5 April.
This relief in Trump’s tariff war could represent a relief for consumers, who feared higher prices, and for US tech companies like Apple, which rely heavily on manufacturing in China, where a large proportion of their iPhones, iPads and Mac computers are produced and assembled.
However, US Bloomberg says he tariff exemption to be temporary, originating from an order by Trump that avoided the overlap of additional tariffs on domestic rates. This suggests that products could soon adjust to a different tariff, possibly lower for China.
Since the announcement of the aggressive tariff policy of the Trump Administration last April 2, Apple has lost more than 640 billion dollars in market value and Microsoft has surpassed it as the most valuable quoted in the world.
This week, US President Donald Trump postponed the application of “reciprocal tariffs” for 90 days to negotiate with the countries involved, but set a basic tax of 10% on imports.
This turn of the wheel, however, was not applied to China, to which Trump has increased “reciprocal tariffs” to 125%, plus another 20% levy that already weighed against him (145% in total), provoking a proportionate response from Beijing and the fear of a full-scale trade war.
Autor: ACJ
Fuente: EFE // teleSURtv.net // Bloomberg