Trump Walks out of Trade War with China with Exemptions
US and Chinese Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping (Image credit X.com)
Trump Signs Tariff Exemptions on ‘40% Chinese imports’
By TRH News Desk
New Delhi, April 12, 2025: In a first possible hint of US backing off from trade war with China, Washington unveiled exemptions for high-end Chinese electronics goods. Experts said that the US exemptions on China cover almost 40 per cent of the total Chinese imports.
Bloomberg broke the news in a report saying that US President Donald Trump exempted smart phones, computers, and other electronic goods from tariffs. The US had scaled up tariffs on China to 145 per cent. However, Gerard DiPippo, an economy journalist in the US, said that exemptions will cover 22 per cent of the total Chinese imports in the US.
A talk show host with MSN, Stephanie Ruhle, said in a post on X: “This week (Commerce) Secretary (Howard) Lutnick said there would be NO exemptions. That has changed. We are now exempting phones, computers. chip making. In other words, 40% of what China exports to us.”
Amy Nixon, an economy analyst with Fox News, in a post on X said that “the tariffs are being used to negotiate better trade terms and put us in a less taken advantage of position as the issuer of the world’s reserve currency with an insane debt to GDP ratio”. “Also to bring back some manufacturing There will be constant tweaks made like this,” she added.
The benefits of exemptions will also go to Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Mexico, and other nations who currently face 10 per cent universal tariff from the US. Experts said that 64 per cent of Taiwan’s exports to the US will now be covered under the exemptions.
The US U-turn on tariffs on China came days after Beijing persisted slapping with counter tariffs. In the last tit-for-tat tariff measure, China said that Beijing will henceforth ignore any more tariffs imposed by the US, for they will no longer make any sense.
The exemptions on high-end electronic goods from China came after a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs announced by the Trump administration. Experts claimed that Trump has almost removed the biting force of tariffs with his flip-flops.
The I-Phone maker Apple is seen as a major beneficiary of the exemptions on China on tariffs. Apple largely manufactures its products in China and sell them globally. Experts noted that Apple was staring at a major business disruption with the US-China trade war.
Nikkei Asia in a report said that HP and Apple halted shipments from inland China to the US. Apple and HP had large manufacturing bases in the inland China.
Besides, Elon Musk, the billionaire aid of Trump, is also pushed into a position of disadvantage as China is a major base for the manufacturing of Tesla’s cars. China is seen to have browbeaten Trump with counter tariffs, as well as banning exports of rare earth metals to the US.
Chinese President Xi Jinping had gone on a diplomatic overdrive with European leaders to call for a pushback against Trump’s unilateralism. Chinese Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi yesterday said that the “US action on tariffs shouldn’t go with impunity” as he called for a global response.
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