The Trump administration is carving out big tariff exemptions for the tech industry.
While President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would delay many of the market-shaking tariffs that he’d announced the previous week, he kept a universal baseline 10% tariff in place, while also increasing tariffs on Chinese goods to 125% (on top of a 20% tariff that he’d already imposed on goods from China).
There’s been plenty of speculation about what the tariffs will mean for the tech industry, which manufactures many consumer electronics in China and elsewhere abroad. One of Trump’s stated goals is to bring manufacturing back to the United States, but others believe the dream of an American-made iPhone is a fantasy.
Those debates may be paused after Friday evening, when U.S. Customs and Border Protection posted a list of product categories that are “excluded from the reciprocal tariffs imposed under Executive Order 14257,” with the exclusions backdated to April 5.
Those categories appear to include smartphones, laptops, hard drives, and semiconductors. Those products will all be exempt from both the 125% tariff on goods from China, as well as the universal baseline tariff. (Other tariffs, such as the previous 20% tariff on Chinese goods, would presumably still apply.)
Notable Silicon Valley figures led by Elon Musk have joined the Trump administration, while other tech CEOs have been courting Trump, most visibly with millions of dollars donated to his inauguration. Those efforts seemed to bear little fruit — until last night’s announcement, which Daniel Ives, global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, described as “a dream scenario for tech investors.”
Tech giants like Apple and Nvidia are likely celebrating the news, as are U.S. consumers who will avoid a big markup on their next iPhone. But the industry could still be hit with more targeted tariffs and other restrictions. For example, The New York Times reports that the Trump administration is preparing a national security-related investigation into semiconductors.
