The tech sector is facing renewed uncertainty after President Trump announced new tariff rates but delayed their implementation until Aug. 1.
“It’s been two steps forward, one step back,” Deepwater Asset Management managing partner Gene Munster told Yahoo Finance’s Daniel Howley.
“We’re still moving forward,” Munster continued, “but what it means for Big Tech is that it opens up this unknown about what happens now and in that … December quarter, because any changes probably won’t really start to take effect until midway through the September quarter.”
Some companies, like Nvidia (NVDA) and Apple (AAPL), won a reprieve from tariffs in the short run but still face individual actions from the Trump administration, Howley wrote in this week’s tech newsletter. Nvidia is contending with a ban on the sale of its chips to China, while Apple is facing heightened pressure from the Trump administration to build its devices in the US or else face a 25% tariff.
Trump has also teased additional tariffs on semiconductors, which could increase the cost of electronics components as well as entire devices that are made overseas — and ultimately weigh on sales.
Some analysts say the uncertainty is worse than the tariffs themselves.
“And so the question will be, does it just go away again?” TECHnalysis Research president and chief analyst Bob O’Donnell said. “Is it more TACO tariffs or not?” he added, referring to the acronym for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
