Trump already backed down on most of his tariffs last week, and now he's backing down and giving in to big tech on a portion of the Chinese tariffs:
President Donald Trump’s administration exempted smartphones, computers and other electronics from its so-called reciprocal tariffs, representing a major reprieve for global technology manufacturers including Apple Inc. and Nvidia Corp. even if it proves a temporary one.
The exclusions, published late Friday by US Customs and Border Protection, narrow the scope of the levies by excluding the products from Trump’s 125% China tariff and his baseline 10% global tariff on nearly all other countries.
The exclusions apply to smartphones, laptop computers, hard drives and computer processors and memory chips as well as flat-screen displays. Those popular consumer electronics items generally aren’t made in the US.
Sen. Chris Murphy pointed out the obvious in the clip above.
MURPHY: So Trump has announced that there are not going to be tariffs on high tech electronics that are being imported from China, while the tariffs remain on textiles and coffee and fruit and vegetables.
That makes no sense at all as economic policy. [...]
The companies that make the high-tech products that profit off the cheap labor in China, they're giving money to Donald Trump.
Here are some of the bribes they paid to Trump for his inauguration:
The CEOs and Companies Behind the World’s Most Expensive Party
According to Common Cause, the following tech companies and CEOs have contributed the following amounts since Trump’s election, as of Jan. 10. Since the money they gave or pledged is for his inauguration, the donations are not governed by campaign finance laws and can be unlimited.
- Amazon: $1 million
- Meta: $1 million
- Google: $1 million
- Microsoft: $1 million
- Uber: $1 million
- Ripple (Cryptocurrency): $5 million
- Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi: $1 million
- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg: $1 million
- Apple CEO Tim Cook: $1 million
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: $1 million
