US says exempted electronic products to come under separate tariffs

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Sunday in an interview with ABC’s This Week that smartphones, computers and some other electronics will come under separate tariffs, along with semiconductors that may be imposed in a month or so.

US President Donald Trump’s administration, late on Friday, granted exclusions from steep tariffs on such products, imported largely from China, providing a big break to tech firms like Apple that rely on imported products.

Lutnick said on Sunday that tariffs on semiconductors would probably be coming “in a month or two”.

“We can’t be relying on China for fundamental things that we need; our medicines and our semiconductors need to be built in America,” he added.

Trump’s government has been predicting its barrage of tariffs targeting China will push Apple into manufacturing the iPhone in the United States for the first time.

But that is an unlikely scenario even with US tariffs now standing at 145 per cent on products made in China – the country where Apple has manufactured most of its iPhones since the first model hit the market 18 years ago.