Tariff Exemptions Lift Big Tech
Good (yet somewhat confusing) news!
Last Friday, the Trump administration announced exclusions for smartphones, computers, semiconductors, and other electronics from President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariff list.
However, in a post on Truth Social on Sunday, President Trump confused everyone, writing “There was no Tariff ‘exception’ announced on Friday.”
Yet Yahoo! Finance reports:
The fact remains that Trump has offered at least a temporary boost to companies with close links to China, and investors are responding by sending stocks of directly impacted companies like Apple and Dell (DELL) higher on Monday morning.
To clarify, these companies are still subject to the 20% fentanyl-related tariff, plus whatever tariffs were in place under the first Trump administration and the Biden administration. But it appears they’re avoiding the brunt of the all-in 145% tariff in place.
This might not last…
Yesterday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that many tech products will face separate tariffs in a month or two. And Trump chimed in, saying that tariffs on tech products will still exist but simply be moved to a different “bucket.”
So, we’ll see how this shakes out. But for the moment, Wall Street is happy(ish). As I write Monday, all three major indexes are up – though they were up far bigger earlier in the session. Given how volatile stocks are these days, who knows where they’ll be by the time you read this.
One note before we move on…
Last Thursday’s Digest included a deep dive into what may be Trump’s real motivation in this trade war – quick, vast reshoring as a matter of national security because the U.S. is dangerously dependent on other countries, mostly China.
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