U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has released new tariff guidance, and the product exemption list includes both smartphone and PC tariff codes, indicating that the reciprocal tariffs won’t have an effect on their pricing.
US CBP Tariff Guidance Includes Exemptions For Smartphones & PCs, Likely Catering To All Global Markets
Well, this is something we weren’t expecting at all; following the announcement of Trump tariffs, we have seen a massive panic in consumer markets, worried about how the prices of IT products will be affected by the new policies. However, CBP’s latest tariff guidance mentions two key tariff codes, 8517.13.00 and 8471, which are assigned to smartphones and PC products, respectively, which indicates that consumer hardware and mobile phones won’t get expensive under the new reciprocal tariffs, creating a massive relief.
According to our interpretation of the documents, the exemption clause doesn’t mention a “China-specific” clause, which means that smartphones and PC products coming from the region won’t see the 145% tariff. This is a major development. The new guidance might just sort out all the fear and uncertainty in the supply chain, allowing companies like Apple, Dell, HP, and many others to resume business operations as expected.
However, given how quickly Trump’s policies are evolving, we cannot be sure that the exemption status will remain the same in the longer run, but at least in the “90-day” pause, we are anticipating that products like Apple’s iPhone, NVIDIA/AMD consumer GPUs, and many others won’t see a price hike, well unless the respective manufacturers decide something else. Apart from this, semiconductor equipment has also seen an exemption under the 8486 code, another relief for the chipmakers setting up facilities in the US.
It seems like the Trump administration has realized the cost of imposing large-scale tariffs on nations that play a vital role in the global supply chain and has excluded certain products like smartphones and PCs to mitigate the process. We are looking forward to further elaboration on the CBP guidance, and we’ll keep our viewers updated.
