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On Friday, the administration carved out an exception for a variety of electronics from the steep taxes now applied to Chinese imports.
By Tony Romm
Tony Romm covers economic policy and reported from Washington.
- April 13, 2025Updated 3:22 p.m. ET
The Trump administration signaled on Sunday that it would pursue new tariffs on the powerful computer chips inside smartphones and other technologies, just two days after it excluded a variety of electronics from the steep import taxes recently applied on goods arriving from China.
The push came as President Trump’s top economic advisers scrambled to explain their shifting strategy, after having insisted for weeks they would shield no company or industry from any of the fees it has levied in a bid to reset U.S. trade relationships.
The reprieve for technology companies arrived in the form of a Customs and Border Protection rule issued late Friday that spared high-tech imports from Mr. Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs, including those on China. While the president paused a set of punishing levies on nearly 60 countries last week, his administration has forged ahead with a new 145 percent tax on Chinese exports, which Washington announced after Beijing retaliated against the United States.
The exclusions in the C.B.P. rule covered a wide slate of products, such as computers, smartphones, modems and flash drives, and it represented a major victory for Apple, Dell and other U.S. technology giants, which rely on Chinese factories to help manufacture important components and popular devices.
But on Sunday, the Trump administration sought to cast those exemptions in a different light, framing them as only a temporary break while the government prepares more targeted taxes on semiconductor imports in the coming weeks. To Mr. Trump and his top aides, the United States sources too many of its chips from abroad, threatening the nation’s national and economic security.
Peter Navarro, a senior White House adviser on trade, insisted on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that they were “not exclusions” at all. Instead, he stressed that the White House still could impose specific tariffs on the computer chips that power countless consumer and military products.
