Commerce Secretary Lutnick says tariff exemptions for electronics are only temporary
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday that the administration’s decision Friday night to exempt a range of electronic devices from tariffs implemented earlier this month was only a temporary reprieve, with the secretary announcing that those items would be subject to “semiconductor tariffs” that will likely come in “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. 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. We can’t be reliant on Southeast Asia for all of the things that operate for us,” Lutnick told “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.
He continued, “So what [President Donald Trump’s] doing is he’s saying they’re exempt from the reciprocal tariffs, but they’re included in the semiconductor tariffs, which are coming in probably a month or two. So these are coming soon.”
The administration’s clarification comes after a U.S. Customs and Border Protection bulletin was posted Friday night outlining key electronics — smartphones, computers, solar cells, flat-panel TV displays and semiconductor-based storage devices, among others — would be exempt from the tariffs announced since April 2. That meant those products would not be subject to steep tariffs on Chinese imports, nor the global 10% tariff rate President Donald Trump had imposed.
Lutnick said on “This Week” that the White House will implement “a tariff model in order to encourage” the semiconductor industry, as well as the pharmaceutical industry, to move its business to the United States.
“We can’t be beholden and rely upon foreign countries for fundamental things that we need,” he said. “So this is not like a permanent sort of exemption. He’s just clarifying that these are not available to be negotiated away by countries. These are things that are national security that we need to be made in America.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
