Donald Trump’s tariff regime keeps getting less and less robust. In the latest backtrack from the Trump administration following the repeated warning of the markets to chill out a bit, the US Customs and Border Protection published guidance late Friday night that introduced new exemptions for smartphones, computers, and other electronics—a major carveout for tech companies that were feeling the crunch.
The exemptions, as reported by Bloomberg, include popular devices like iPhones and MacBooks, as well as Android and Windows devices made overseas. It also includes hardware like hard drives, computer processors, memory chips, and graphics cards. Some have noted the exemption does not include video game consoles, which leaves things still pretty up in the air for the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2.
Notably, the exemptions apply universally, meaning these items coming into the US will not be subject to the 10% global tariff that currently applies to every nation, nor the 145% tariff that is currently levied against China. The exemption was also backdated to April 5, 2025, so just pretend this whole past week didn’t happen.
The exemption comes after another week of extremely volatile markets that seem to be pleading with Trump to stop harassing the nation’s top trade partner while the rest of the world side-eyes America and starts shifting its money elsewhere. Pretty much the only thing that has sent the markets bouncing back up in the last few weeks is even the tiniest of breadcrumbs suggesting that maybe Trump isn’t as pot-committed to the nonsensically calculated tariffs as he insists he is.
Trump left a little trail for investors, suggesting this type of exemption might be on the horizon on Friday when he told reporters aboard Air Force One that there could be “a couple of exceptions for obvious reasons” coming. He didn’t say what the obvious reasons were, but we can probably interpret that as “we’d like to stop the bleeding for some of our most profitable companies.”
The tech sector was certainly signaling that pain was coming. Apple reportedly airlifted 1.5 million iPhones to the United States from Inida to try to keep them from getting hit by the tariffs, and was warning that the prices of their devices could be going up soon. Other major tech players including Asus, Sony, and Nividia all started ticking up the retail price for their devices as the tariffs took effect. Consumers, expecting those price increases, raced to stockpile devices.
Those who might be in the market to buy a new phone or computer can breathe a slight sigh of relief now, as can the companies who were ready to upend their entire logistics to try to figure out how to duck the extra charges.
The exemption does seem to suggest a backtrack from Trump’s position that we can just make our electronics in the country. Earlier this week, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Donald Trump “believes we have the labor, we have the workforce, we have the resources” to build iPhones in America—which is maybe theoretically true, but in practice, experts say such a device would cost as much as $3,500 to buy, plus years to build the manufacturing infrastructure to even do it. Shocking that idea didn’t stick.
