Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs

Posted by tosh 4/12/2025

Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs(www.bloomberg.com)

408 points | 884 commentspage 4

wnc3141 4/13/2025|

My cynical read is that there will eventually be complete corporate capture of these tariffs. Then firms will try to protect their carveouts that make unfair advantages.

Its about their corporate supporters choosing winners and losers. Its the only reason I can conjure that corporate America has otherwise been silent.

roland35 4/13/2025|

Will be? Seems like it already happened! All for a low price of a $1M dinner.

howard941 4/12/2025||

They're called reciprocal but the Chinese tariffs on US goods looks like they're gonna stay. That and dumping our bonds doesn't bode well for the rest of us.

tim333 4/13/2025||

And they're back(?):

>NOBODY is getting “off the hook” for the unfair Trade Balances, and Non Monetary Tariff Barriers, that other Countries have used against us, especially not China which, by far, treats us the worst! 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.” The Fake News knows this, but refuses to report it. We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations...

(truth social Apr 13, 2025, 8:36 PM. You need the day and time to see what the tariffs are that particular hour really)

atomicbeanie 4/13/2025||

Time to just call these tariffs: sales tax. Extra money for the government on all goods imported are taxes. The rest of the complexity distracts from the basic cash flow and the inevitable results. More money spent and consumed by the government.

otterley 4/13/2025|

They’re worse than sales taxes, because the goods imported are subject to levies even if they’re unsold and eventually destroyed.

DangitBobby 4/13/2025||

Right, but the goal is to solve a marketing issue. The Trump base is resistent to criticisms of dear leader and the mechanisms behind tariffs raising all prices can be misunderstood (and let's be honest, who really trusts economists). Call it a sales tax, they know what that is. The mechanism doesn't matter.

mrguyorama 4/14/2025||

To "solve the marketing issue", you have to be able to market to them.

They have 100% bought into a totally controlled media ecosystem. How do you get your marketing material on Fox, or Truth Social?

vdupras 4/12/2025||

Nothing means anything anymore. This of course will change completely on monday, then again on tuesday. Of course in the spirit of insider plundering. This circus will go on until we hear the magic words "the chocolate rations have been increased by 20g".

backWurdz 4/12/2025||

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tines 4/12/2025||

Things started to make more sense to me once I realized that human beings hate freedom and love tyranny. Once you accept this, it all falls in place. Deporting citizens to foreign prisons? Sounds great. Incoherent foreign and economic policy? Love it. Freedom of the press? Who needs it! Destruction of democracy? Own the libs! Legalize bribery of foreign officials? Even the playing field! And finally, words don’t need to mean anything because they are simply evocations intended to stir up certain emotions. They are more akin to a hunter’s duck call. The hunter doesn’t speak duck and doesn’t care whether that sounds he’s making have any meaning, he simply makes noise and looks for a result. Not getting the desired result? Just change the noise a little.

This is why democracy will eventually fail and autocracy will rise in its place. And no one will ever learn.

SamuelAdams 4/12/2025||

Actual source: https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDHSCBP/bulletins/...

api 4/12/2025||

So we are going to… uhh… tariff and try to repatriate a lot of lower value less strategically important manufacturing while giving up on higher value strategic stuff like chips?

mppm 4/12/2025||

This is pretty much how I expected this to play out, at least for now. Trump acts all tough and doesn't back down publicly, but China actually doesn't back down. So what happens is that some businesses get exemptions to mitigate the impact. Then some fine print gets changed about how the rules are enforced. Like, suddenly it turns out that Kiribati is a major electronics supplier to the US :)

End result - US economy takes a hit, China takes a smaller hit. Trade balance widens further, most likely. The rich get richer, while many small companies struggle to survive.

jmull 4/12/2025||

> doesn't back down publicly

Seems like he has been backing down publicly all week. Quickly too.

This has been a massive catastrophe, though I suspect you're right about the end result.

mppm 4/12/2025||

Maybe publicly was not the right word. What I really meant is that the nominal 145% rate will remain in effect, so he can continue to pretend that the tariffs are still there and still hurting China, while he makes "minor adjustments" to protect American businesses.

optimalsolver 4/14/2025||

Comment cited here:

https://www.themotte.org/post/1827/culture-war-roundup-for-t...

techpineapple 4/12/2025||

Wasn’t Howard Lutnick on TV recently explicitly saying they wanted to bring iPhone assembly here? How is one to understand the union of these two perspectives?

https://fortune.com/2025/04/07/howard-lutnick-iphones-americ...

sidvit 4/12/2025||

Howard Lutnick got pulled from the TV sidelines over stuff like this apparently. Bessent is running the show now which is probably why they’re actually responding to the bond market punching them in the face this week

ceejayoz 4/12/2025||

> How is one to understand the union of these two perspectives?

Only one perspective actually matters right now, and it's notoriously mercurial.

Administration officials often have about as much knowledge of what's to come as we do.

jmward01 4/12/2025|

This is a massive sign that Trump's double down strategy is failing badly. He only has one play: Be a bully and double down any time someone fights back. It works when you have the leverage but as soon as you don't anymore you loose, big. The US just ran out of leverage. I don't know about everyone else but I just started looking into how to move money and investments outside the US.

timmg 4/12/2025|

> I don't know about everyone else but I just started looking into how to move money and investments outside the US.

Based on tweets I've seen, you are not the only one engaging in "capital flight". Not great for the US.

One would like to think this will be a good lesson for the administration. But I'm worried that they are not acting completely rationally.

jmward01 4/13/2025||

he only has the one play so there is really only one outcome.

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