Tim Prepare dinner and Donal Trump in 2019 — picture credit score: White Home
Regardless of scaremongering headlines, Trump didn’t escalate his “reciprocal” China tariff to 245% on Tuesday evening. The determine is a reinstatement of earlier tariffs that do not apply to Apple or large tech in any respect.
Approaching prime of earlier escalations and the Apple exemption that Trump says is not an exemption, it would not have been stunning if the China tariff rose once more. And the White Home itself stoked fear-mongering by the way it phrased the tariffs in a truth sheet issued late on Tuesday evening, April 15, 2025.
“China now faces as much as a 245% tariff on imports to the USA,” says the truth sheet, “because of its retaliatory actions.”
Nonetheless, the 245% tariff is the utmost utilized out of an infinite vary of tariffs towards US corporations importing from China. It consists of, for instance, a long-standing 20% tariff on items that embody Fentanyl, which no Apple merchandise do.
There’s a pre-2025 tariff of 100% on gadgets corresponding to syringes and needles, which was in place earlier than the omnibus tariff announcement earlier in April. Different items, together with clothes and photo voltaic panels, are topic to a tariff that ranges from 7% to 100%
So it’s true that some corporations are dealing with having to pay two and a half instances the price of items they import from China, it’s not the blanket escalation made on Monday that it’s being made out to be.
Trump initially set a tariff of 104% on China, then raised it to 125% after China responded by imposing its personal tariffs on US imports. As usually with the tariffs, Trump later clarified that the quantity was really 145%.
On the time, China stated that Trump’s tariffs have been bullying, however stated it could not increase its personal tariffs past its preliminary retaliatory 125%.
Based on China Day by day, China’s International Minister Lin Jian instructed journalists they need to ask Trump concerning the rise. “You may take this quantity to the US facet for a solution,” he stated.
However Lin additionally stated that there are not any winners in tariff and commerce wars. “China just isn’t prepared to battle [such a war], neither is it afraid of combating,” he continued.
Trump has repeatedly stated that China ought to do what he claims different nations have accomplished, and ask for negotiations.
“If the US genuinely needs to resolve the issue by dialogue and negotiation,” stated Lin, “it ought to hand over its strategy of imposing excessive strain, cease threatening and blackmailing, and have interaction in dialogue with the Chinese language facet on the premise of equality, respect and mutual profit.”
Alongside the Apple exemption, Trump additionally paused all tariffs on April 9, 2025 — apart from China. Whereas Apple is presently escaping these China tariffs, Trump additionally introduced a spurious probe into the nationwide safety implications of semiconductor utilization.
Whereas that investigation is formally ongoing and will not report till after it hears submissions from events, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick has already prejudged the probe and stated that semiconductor tariffs shall be coming.
