The tech industry may not be safe from new tariffs, according to U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
The Trump administration announced Friday evening that consumer electronics such as laptops and smartphones would be exempt from the tariffs it unveiled earlier this month. (While Trump delayed many of those tariffs this week, he left a 10% baseline tariff in place, and also levied an additional 125% tariff on Chinese goods.)
Reports about the exemptions noted that tech products might still be affected by targeted tariffs to come, with semiconductors coming under particular scrutiny.
Lutnick made that more explicit on Sunday morning during an interview with the ABC show “This Week,” saying that Trump is making these products “exempt from the reciprocal tariffs” but including them in “the semiconductor tariffs, which are coming in probably a 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 reshored,” 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.”
Pressed on whether tariffs will mean higher prices for American consumers, Lutnick said, “I don’t think so,” and again emphasized, “I think the idea is that we can manufacture in America.” (Others have described Lutnick’s vision in which “the army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America,” as a fantasy.)
Trump, meanwhile, posted on Truth Social that there was “no Tariff ‘exception’ announced on Friday,” because (as noted in much of the initial coverage, including TechCrunch’s story) electronics made in China remain subject to a separate 20% tariff that Trump has tied to fentanyl. He also said these products “are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket.’”
“The Fake News knows this, but refuses to report it,” he wrote. “We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations.”
This post has been updated with Donald Trump’s commentary on Truth Social.
