‘This is not a permanent sort of exemption. [The president is] just clarifying that these are not available to be negotiated away by countries,’ Lutnick said.
President Donald Trump said on April 13 that he would announce a new non-negotiable tariff rate for imported semiconductors within the next week.
Trump, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on his return to Washington from his estate in West Palm Beach, said, “Like we did with steel, like we did with automobiles, like we did with aluminum, which are now fully on, we‘ll be doing that with semiconductors, with chips and numerous other things. And that’ll take place in the very near future.”
“We wanted to uncomplicate it from a lot of other companies,” he added of the industry-specific tariffs, “because we want to make our chips and semiconductors and other things in our country.”
Earlier on Sunday, in a social media post, the president said “nobody is getting ‘off the hook’ for the unfair trade balances, and non-monetary tariff barriers, that other countries have used against us, especially not China.”
The president stated, “There was no Tariff ‘exception’ announced on Friday. These products are subject to the existing 20 percent Fentanyl Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket.’”
He also announced a national security trade probe into the semiconductor sector.
“We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations,” he wrote.
The president said another bucket of tariffs is being designed to address national security issues in the pharmaceutical supply chain.
“We want to make our drugs in this country, and by placing a tariff on the companies that are not in this country … We’re going to have our drugs made in the United States so that in case of war, in case of whatever, were not relying on China and various other countries.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, speaking with ABC’s “This Week” on April 13, said that the range of electronic product imports will fall under the separate tariff plans that focus on semiconductors.
By Jacob Burg
