US President Donald Trump’s administration exempted smartphones, computers and other electronics from its so-called reciprocal tariffs, potentially cushioning consumers from sticker shock while benefiting electronics giants including Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co.
The exclusions, published late on Friday by US Customs and Border Protection, narrow the scope of the levies by excluding the products from Trump’s 125 percent China tariff and his baseline 10 percent global tariff on nearly all other countries.
The exclusions would apply to smartphones, laptop computers, hard drives and computer processors and memory chips.
Photo: AFP
Those popular consumer electronics items generally are not made in the US. Setting up domestic manufacturing would take years.
The products that would not be subject to Trump’s new tariffs also include machines used to make semiconductors.
That would be important for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which has announced a major new investment in the US, as well as other chipmakers.
The tariff reprieve may prove fleeting.
The exclusions stem from the initial order, which prevented extra tariffs on certain sectors from stacking cumulatively on top of the country-wide rates.
The exclusion is a sign that the products may soon be subject to a different tariff, albeit almost surely a lower one for China.
One such exclusion was for semiconductors, to which Trump has regularly pledged to apply a specific tariff.
He has not yet done so but the latest exclusions appear to correspond with that exemption.
Trump’s sectoral tariffs have so far been set at 25 percent, although it is not clear what his rate on semiconductors and related products would be.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS