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
