It appears the US tech industry might not be free from additional tariffs after all.
President Donald Trump said Sunday in a Truth Social post that tech-related tariffs are still on the table, two days after the US announced that many tech products would be exempt from the recently announced tariffs against China.
“There was no Tariff ‘exception’ announced on Friday,” Trump wrote. “These products are subject to the existing 20% Fentanyl Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket.'”
Last week, US Customs and Border Protection published a list of tech categories exempt from the huge tariffs levied against China, including smartphones, computers, and chip-making equipment. The news was well-received by the tech industry, which hoped to recover some of its losses when markets reopen on Monday.
But any investor excitement will likely be tempered by Trump’s Sunday comments. Trump said that “nobody is getting off the hook” amid the ongoing trade war between the United States and China.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick echoed Trump’s comments during an interview with ABC News on Sunday, saying that tech products would be subject to tariffs after an investigation into the effect importing vital tech components has on national security.
He said that while tech products are “exempt from the reciprocal tariffs,” they will be included in what he called “semiconductor tariffs,” which he said could come in the next month or two.
“All those products are going to come under semiconductors, and they’re going to have a special focus type of tariff to make sure that those products get re-shored,” Lutnick said. “We need to have semiconductors, we need to have chips, and we need to have flat panels — we need to have these things made in America. We can’t be reliant on Southeast Asia for all of the things that operate for us.”
The White House confirmed to BI in an email on Saturday that Trump intended to issue new tariffs on certain tech products in the future.
“President Trump has made it clear America cannot rely on China to manufacture critical technologies such as semiconductors, chips, smartphones, and laptops,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told BI by email. “That’s why the President has secured trillions of dollars in US investments from the largest tech companies in the world, including Apple, TSMC, and Nvidia. At the direction of the President, these companies are hustling to onshore their manufacturing in the United States as soon as possible.”
The Friday exemptions are still welcome news for the tech industry, coming after a wild week in global financial markets. The intensifying trade war between the United States and China caused chaos in both the stock and bond markets.
While many tech giants have deep ties to China, Apple, in particular, is fully enmeshed in the country, where it has spent years building up the supply chain for its iPhones.
In a post on X, Wall Street analyst Dan Ives on Saturday called the exemptions “dream news” for the sector. After the comments from Lutnick and Trump on Sunday, Ives tempered his enthusiasm but said the “worst case scenario” — 145% tariffs — was at least taken off the table.
“As chaotic/confusing as this last 48 hours is with tariffs…semis/tech getting put in the 20% tariff bucket and not exposed to the 145% reciprocal is good step..that will be the focus of tech investors,” he said on X.
Tech investor Matt Turck, a partner at the venture capital firm FirstMark Capital, told Business Insider that the exemption from the steepest tariffs was “a major relief to the tech and AI industry.”
He added that “they’re the sensical thing to do in an otherwise completely nonsensical series of decisions.”
Responding to the US’s move on Sunday, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce said it was a “small step” toward rectifying what it sees as a misguided policy, according to Chinese state news. The Commerce Ministry also reportedly called for the United States to “completely cancel” its remaining “reciprocal” tariffs.
