Whiplash
Trump’s exceptions keep getting reversed: President Donald Trump just can’t make up his mind about which Chinese products will have tariffs applied to them upon crossing our borders.
All last week, Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping engaged in a tit-for-tat trade war escalation. On Friday, the Trump administration made tariff exceptions (but don’t call them that?) for smartphones, semiconductors, computers, and other tech goods (modems, routers, flash drives, and the like), signaling that they’d be subject to the lower 20 percent tariff versus the much higher 125 percent ones. (The 125 percent tariffs aren’t as universal as it had seemed like they would be last week—and the administration has been oscillating between claiming the total tariff amount is 125 percent and 145 percent. The actual category breakdown is here, with tax amounts that vary substantially. And the electronics tariffs exemptions apply to all imports, not just Chinese ones.)
Trump says no tariff “exception” was announced on Friday pic.twitter.com/0h4qFZti6j
— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) April 13, 2025
Then, over the weekend, the administration signaled that semiconductor chip tariffs would be announced separately, and might be larger. “We wanted to uncomplicate it from a lot of other companies, because we want to make our chips and semiconductors and other things in our country,” the president told reporters aboard Air Force One. “We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations,” he posted on Truth Social. Then, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick made the cable news rounds on Sunday, saying that these electronics—laptops, phones, etc.—will not be excluded from tariffs long-term, just that those specific categories will be announced at the same time as the semiconductor tariffs, in a month or two.
This about sums it up:
Sentiment check: The biggest rally of the year would come on the day Lutnick gets fired.
I suggest the administration figures out who controls the message, whatever it is,
as it changes every day.
US business can’t plan or invest with the constant back and forth. pic.twitter.com/d78bwFBLMO— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) April 13, 2025
Also, this:
WHY TARIFF BANANAS? pic.twitter.com/ayXpjBbUpY
— Armand Domalewski (@ArmandDoma) April 1
Article from Reason.com
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