In a tremendous turnaround, President Donald Trump removed the hefty tariffs he’d imposed on phone, computers and many other electronics being imported into the United States. The change, which came late Friday, should prevent price hikes that Apple, HP, Dell, etc. would likely have had to charge customers to pay for the import taxes.
There will reportedly also be no tariffs on processors, TVs, solar panels, flash drives and removable memory cards — no matter what country they are made in.
Update: The Trump administration said Sunday that it only provided electronics with temporary tariff relief.
iPhone, Mac and more exempted from Trump tariffs
Last week, Trump slapped all major manufacturing countries with heavy import tariffs in a bid to reshape international trade. This Wednesday, he reduced the import taxes to 10% on most countries, but raised them on China. Currently, the tariff on Chinese imports to the United States stands at 145%.
Apple was one of the companies most heavily affected, as many of its products are assembled by Foxconn in China. They’re also assembled in India, Vietnam and other countries where there are also new tariffs, just not as severe as the one on China-made goods.
But late in the day on Friday, he made exceptions for a wide range of electronics. Trump did not make a statement giving the reason for the enormous change in policy. It came only an update published quietly on the website of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“I think ultimately big tech CEOs spoke loudly, and the White House had to understand and listen to the situation that this would have been Armageddon for big tech if were implemented,” Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, told CNBC.
Expect a jump in Apple share price
News of the change in policy didn’t come until after stock markets closed on Friday, but it should boost the AAPL share price dramatically when trading resumes on Monday. The stock is down more than 11% since Trump began imposing large new import taxes earlier this month, and the removal of these should spur investors.
In addition, buyers of iPhone, Mac, iPad and more don’t have to be concerned that Apple will be forced to raise its prices to cover tariff costs… at least for now. U.S. law gives the President the power to raise or lower tariffs at any time, and Trump could once again change his mind and reimpose these taxes on electronics.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
