From Bloomberg:
President Donald Trump’s administration exempted smartphones, computers and other electronics from its so-called reciprocal tariffs, representing a major reprieve for global technology manufacturers including Apple Inc. and Nvidia Corp. even if it proves a temporary one.
The exclusions, published late Friday by US Customs and Border Protection, narrow the scope of the levies by excluding the products from Trump’s 125% China tariff and his baseline 10% global tariff on nearly all other countries.
The exclusions apply to smartphones, laptop computers, hard drives and computer processors and memory chips. Those popular consumer electronics items generally aren’t made in the US.
One estimate (Barron’s) indicates the exemptions cover $385bn (2024) worth of imports. Assume all of the imports were from China and extended for a year with no quantity response, that would reduce the tariff burden by $558 billion[better estimate $84 billion from China, rest from RoW, so $169bn]. Of course, as noted by Bloomberg, the reprieves will likely prove to be temporary, albeit the end-tariff rates at lower than 145%. (The actual amount of revenue obtained if the 145% tariff were in place for an entire year would be lower due to the reduction of import quantity, which depends on the price elasticity of electronics imports).
So, policy uncertainty remains (at record) high:
