Trump Orders Exemptions on Phones and Computers

Tariff reversal gives tech giants a break

Author

Matt Davis
April 13, 2025

Hi, friends! I’m fresh from an exhilarating day at the New York Squash league finals yesterday where the community I’m a part of, Open Squash, took home a record medal haul. If you’ve ever wanted to try squash and think you’re not an ideal squash player, talk to me. I watched a pregnant woman go 2-0 up against the Yale Club yesterday and it was the best thing ever. I lost to two men in their sixties last week. You get the idea. Squash is for everyone, especially for the people who don’t think squash is for them. That means you!

New York Squash: If it looks like a party, it’s because it IS a party. It actually was a blast. Incredibly-good amateur squash being played from 1030-5pm.

And as we all know, Irishman Rory McIlroy is leading a brash Saudi-loving American in the last round of the Masters today, plus the Golden State Warriors must beat the Los Angeles Clippers this afternoon to ensure they stay out of the “play-in” tournament in the NBA. I guess this is a long way of saying I like sports because they’re a lot easier to process without a huge amount of anxiety than reading the newspaper. Our four-year son also pulled a bunch of letters out and started saying what they were, just now, which is interesting, because I had no idea he even knew his alphabet. That’s some good news. Perhaps I should pay him a tad more attention, eh?

Hey, speaking of good news…

It looks like Donald Trump has decided to do another U-turn on his disastrous trade policy!

That’s right. Today’s story is by the amazingly-named Apple reporter Tripp Mickle, who reports that the Trump administration has decided to spare companies like Apple and Dell from the China trade war. Break it down, Mickle:

A message posted late Friday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection included a long list of products that would not face the reciprocal tariffs President Trump imposed in recent days on Chinese goods as part of a worsening trade war. The exclusions would also apply to modems, routers, flash drives and other technology goods, which are largely not made in the United States.

This is what you call a low-key climbdown on a high-key climbdown. Do anything on a Friday night, especially through a message posted by an agency, and it’s almost as if you don’t want it to be the focus of your PR strategy. Even if “the exemptions could dampen additional inflation and calm the turmoil that many economists feared might lead to a recession.” And “the tariff relief was also the latest flip-flop in Mr. Trump’s effort to rewrite global trade in a bid to boost U.S. manufacturing.”

President Trump is still committed to seeing more of these products made domestically, the story reports, even if it would bring the price of an iPhone to $3,800.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens to $AAPL ( ▲ 2.21% ) stock on Monday morning.

Paul Ashworth, the chief North America economist for Capital Economics, said the move “represents a partial de-escalation of President Trump’s trade war with China.”

He said the 20 product types that were exempted on Friday account for nearly a quarter of U.S. imports from China. 

How long until we have the rest of the de-escalation, do you think? A few days?

As a further reminder:

The changes punctuated a wild week in which Mr. Trump backtracked from many tariffs he introduced on April 2, which he had called “liberation day.” His so-called reciprocal tariffs had introduced taxes that would reach up to 40 percent on products imported from some nations. After the stock and bond markets plunged, Mr. Trump reversed course and said he would pause levies for 90 days.

Sorry to remind you, but I’m wondering how Mr. Trump will have spent the weekend forgetting what, I would argue, is one of the most disastrous weeks in his modern political history. My bet is by plotting a worse week next week? But you never know. Perhaps he’s been watching the Masters.

This is good news for Apple, of course, which has resisted pressure to make the iPhone in America since President Barack Obama was in charge. God. Do you remember those days?

Anyway Tripp Mickle reports that Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, has made a smart point:

“In the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I’m not sure we could fill the room,” he said at a conference in late 2017. “In China, you could fill multiple football fields.”

Even commerce secretary Howard Lutnick appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” last week, “and said the tariffs would result in an “army of millions and millions of people screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones” in the United States.”

China’s TikTok—which, hey, weren’t they supposed to be selling that?—erupted with memes mocking American “manufacturing” last week, too:

Sure, they’re the product of an AI-driven propaganda mill run by a hostile power. But: They work.

Remember this Banksy-penned intro to The Simpsons? It came out 15 years ago…and remains rather good, and reminds me of all this.

I’m still scratching my head over why $FOXA ( ▲ 1.31% ) allowed it to be aired. I suppose because on balance they’re a capitalist company in a democracy and the theory goes that in such an environment, as opposed to, say, a dictatorship, free speech trumps everything.

Remember what that felt like? I really do.

Thanks for letting me read the newspaper so that you don’t have to!

Say, is there a story on the front page that might make me feel better?

Oh, sure. You can read a profile of Jon Hamm. I walked past him in the street last year and he was even more devastatingly handsome than he is on television.

It must be lonely. Obviously I get glimpses of that feeling sometimes but even I will concede that Jon Hamm is considerably more charismatic than even I am. It’s like black magic.

Have a good Sunday.

Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.

Standard disclaimer: I read the top story in the New York Times every morning so that you don’t have to. If you were forwarded this, you can subscribe here. I’m also doing a five-minute video version of this, each weekday morning at around 9 a.m. (depending on how long it takes me to read the newspaper). If you’d like to follow me on LinkedIn (you can always watch the recording later). If you subscribe to my Youtube channel it’ll also send you a notification when I’m “going live.”