Consumers and investors who cheered the news last week that smartphones and other electronic items would get an exemption from the tariffs being instituted by the Trump administration may have to temper their enthusiasm a bit.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday that the exemption is only temporary.
“They’re exempt from the reciprocal tariffs but they’re included in the semiconductor tariffs, which are coming in probably a month or two,” Lutnick said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The Trump administration late Friday said they would exclude several types of electronic items, including smartphones and computers, from recently announced reciprocal tariffs, including the 125% tariff imposed on China. Hard drives, memory chips, flat-panel television screens and semiconductors were also among the excluded products, according to USA Today.
But Lutnick’s statement on Sunday indicated that it was just a temporary reprieve.
“Those products are going to be part of the semiconductor sectoral tariffs, which are coming,” Lutnick said on “This Week.”
Later Sunday, in a post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump said “There was no Tariff ‘exception’ announced on Friday. These products are subject to the existing 20% Fentanyl Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket.’ “
Meanwhile, Trump on Monday said that he was considering exemptions from tariffs for the auto industry. Late last month, he announced a 25% tariff on auto and auto parts imports.
“I’m looking at something to help some of the car companies, where they’re switching to parts that were made in Canada, Mexico and other places,” Trump said, according to USA Today. “And they need a little bit of time, because they’re going to make them here.”
Trump’s tariff announcements have been a major driver of stock market moves ― both up and down ― in recent weeks. When Trump announced sweeping tariffs on April 2, the next day the stock market had its worst day since the Covid-19 pandemic. When he announced a 90-day pause to many of those tariffs the next week, the market soared.
