President Donald Trump is offering top technology firms a sweet reprieve from his sky-high tariffs on goods from China, the administration announced Friday night.
Many tech devices and parts—such as smartphones and computers—are included on a list of products exempt from Trump’s 125 percent tariff. The move spares hardware giants such as Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft, which rely on Chinese exports, the brunt of the economic pain from the taxes.
Also featured on the exemption list are semiconductors, TVs, and tablets.
Earlier this week, the president had backed off a sweeping tariff plan that established a 10 percent universal tax on all foreign goods entering the U.S., with higher rates for certain trading partners. Trump, who has argued that his tariffs will bring manufacturing jobs back to America, kept and raised the tariff imposed on China.
Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said on CBS News last week that as a result of the tariffs, “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.”
Lutnick: “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.” pic.twitter.com/g9TqxGxLHs
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 6, 2025
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment on the U-turn.
As the market was sent cratering by Trump’s initial universal tariff announcement, some analysts predicted that the price of Apple’s iPhone could balloon from around $1,200 to as much as $3,500 if it were made in America.
Dan Ives, the head of tech research at Wedbush Securities, told CNBC that the decision to exempt electronic goods was a “dream scenario for tech investors.”
“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,” he said.
Apple’s stock price soared 4 percent on Saturday.
The owners of the biggest American tech companies have fallen over themselves to butter Trump up since he won the presidency in November.
Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Google were among a group of tech firms that donated a million dollars each to Trump’s inauguration.
Both Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos have both given companies they own a MAGA makeover in the months since Trump won.
The Meta owner announced in January that he was ending Facebook’s fact-checking program and shifting its moderation staff from blue California to red Texas, “where there’s less concern about the bias of our teams.”
On Friday, news broke that Dina Powell McCormick, who served as a national security official during Trump’s first term, was joining Meta’s board. She is also the wife of West Virginia Sen. David McCormick, an outspoken MAGA devotee.
Bezos, in February, declared that the opinion section of The Washington Post, which he owns, would from now would write only in support of “free markets and personal liberties,” leaving viewpoints critical of the conservative “pillars” to other publications.
Zuckerberg, Bezos, and other top CEOs who have backed Trump lost billions when the markets tanked under his tariff policies this month. Their fortunes have largely recovered as the president has reversed course.
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