Trump's Electronics Tariff Exemption Is Temporary, Says US Commerce Secretary
The White House noted that the exemptions were made to ensure firms had more time to move production to the US
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that the recent tariff exemptions by the Donald Trump administration on certain electronics would only be temporary. The US administration had announced earlier that consumer electronics such as laptops and smartphones would be exempt from the tariffs.
During an interview on ABC's "This Week", Lutnick said that semiconductor tariffs are imminent. "All those products will come under semiconductors, and they're going to have a special focus type of tariff to make sure that those products get re-shored," the Commerce Secretary said, as quoted by Axios. “We need to have semiconductors, we need to have chips, and we need to have flat panels — we need to have these things made in America," Lutnick added.
The White House noted that the exemptions were made to ensure firms had more time to move production to the US. At the same time, US tech companies have reportedly raised concerns that the price of gadgets could skyrocket, as many of them are made in China. Meanwhile, Donald Trump noted on Sunday that semiconductor tariffs “will be in place in the not distant future” and that he would announce at what rate “over the next week”.