Smartphones and computer monitors are some of the electronic devices that the US has decided to leave free of the so -called reciprocal tariffs by the Trump administration, according to a warning of the Office of Customs and Border Protection of the United States (CBP).
The new CBP guideline, in charge of collecting tariffs on imports, also includes a list with about twenty components and electronic devices, among which are semiconductor chips, flat television screens, flash units (‘pendrive’) and memory cards.
This exemption, according to this CBP document published in the last hours, will apply to those products imported to the US and that have entered the North American country or leave the stores in their places of origin as of April 5.
This could represent a relief for consumers, who faced the possibility of paying higher prices for the commercial war between the United States and China, and for American technological giants such as Apple, which manufacture much of their products in the Asian country.
In fact, approximately 90 % of Apple’s production and assembly is done in China, according to Wedbush Securities estimates.
In addition, according to Everscore IS, 80 % of iPads and more than half of the MAC computers produced are manufactured in China.
Since the announcement of the aggressive tariff policy of the Trump administration on April 2, Apple has lost more than 640,000 million dollars in market value and Microsoft has surpassed it as the most valuable quoted in the world.
This new guideline “now eliminates a huge black cloud over the technological sector and the pressure faced by the great American technology (…) these have no other option, since the supply chain is essentially in Asia,” he considered the head of technological research of Wedbush Securities, Dan Ives, in a statement.
This week, the US president, Donald Trump, postponed the application of the “reciprocal tariffs” 90 days to negotiate with the countries involved, but set a 10 % base tax on imports.
This helm, however, was not applied to China, to which Trump has increased the “reciprocal tariffs” to 125 %, plus another 20 % tax that already weighed against him (145 % in total), causing a proportional response of Beijing and fear of a large -scale commercial war.