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      It is difficult to imagine a post-American world. But imagine it we must | Nesrine Malik

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      “People speak with forked tongues about America,” a veteran foreign correspondent once said to me. It was a long time ago – during a debate about whether the US should intervene in a foreign conflict – and I have never forgotten it. What they meant was that just as the US is condemned for foreign intervention in some instances, it is also called upon to do so in others and then judged for not upholding its moral standards. That dissonance persists, and is even more jarring as we approach the 100th day of Donald Trump’s second term. There is a duality to how the US is seen: as both a country that wantonly violates international law and as the only one capable of upholding that system of law and order. This duality, always tense, is no longer sustainable.I have felt this ambivalence myself – the contradictory demand that the US stay out of it but also anger that it is not doing more. In Sudan, Washington frustratingly refuses to pressure its ally, the UAE, into stopping pumping arms and funding into the conflict. But what proof or history is there to support the delusional notion that the US cares about a conflict in which it has no direct interest? It is an expectation of moral policing from an amoral player that I remember even in childhood, after Iraq invaded Kuwait and the Arab world was rocked with fear of regional war. A fierce debate in our classroom in Sudan on the merits of US intervention was silenced by one indignant evacuee from Kuwait, who said that the most important thing was to defeat Saddam Hussein. Her words occasionally echo in my mind: “We must deal with the greater evil first.”Even in Gaza, as Congress passed package after package of billions in military aid to Israel, there remained some residual hope – long extinguished now – that the phone call to Benjamin Netanyahu would finally come. And even as Trump emboldens Vladimir Putin, abandons Ukraine and slaps tariffs on allies, you can detect that belief in the fundamental viability of the US as an actor that can still default to rationality, and even morality.But, for the first time that I can remember, the conversation is going in a new direction. The appeals to the difference between the presidency and other more solid US institutions are quieter now, as universities, law firms and even parts of the press kowtow to their erratic new king. The questions now being asked are about how Europe and the rest of the world can pivot away from the US, from its USAID programmes nestled within the health budgets of developing countries, and its global system of military assistance and deterrence. But they sound less like practical suggestions and more like attempts to get heads around a reality that is impossible to countenance.The challenge is technical and psychological. It is difficult to imagine a post-American world because America crafted that world. When the US becomes a volatile actor, the very architecture of the global financial order starts to wobble. We saw this in the crisis of confidence in the dollar in the aftermath of Trump’s “liberation-day” tariffs. The robustness of the rule of law and separation of powers – cornerstones of confidence in an economy – are also now in doubt, as the administration goes to war with its own judiciary and the president himself boasts about how many people in the room with him made a killing out of his stock market crash. Is it insider trading if your source is the president?Just as formidable is the mental task of divestment from the US. A friend who holds a green card but lives under an illiberal regime in Asia told me that, deep down, he always felt protected from the dangers of his country’s domestic politics by the knowledge that there was a safe haven to which he could retreat in case of persecution. No longer, as legal residents and visitors are hounded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) or turned away at the border. I know others who have cancelled work trips to the US for fear of deportation or blacklisting. With that insecurity comes an awareness that, for some in the global south who always knew that the US was not a benign presence, there was still the belief that there was something within its own borders that curbed its excesses. This was partly true, but also a reflection of US cultural power. The pursuit of liberty and the pursuit of happiness, “give me … your huddled masses”, the Obama hope iconography; all resonant and powerful touchstones. They are now reduced to dust. It is one thing to know that the US was never the sum of these parts, but another to accept it.And there is a fear in accepting it. Because, for all its violations, the advent of a post-US world induces a feeling of vertigo. A world in which there is no final authority at all might be scarier than a world where there is a deeply flawed one. What is daunting is the prospect of anarchy, a new world where there is no organising principle in a post-ideological, everyone-for-themselves system. Not a cold war order divided into capitalist, communist and non-aligned. And not a post-cold war one divided into western liberal overlords, competing non-democracies and, below them, smaller clients of both.But what the US’s breakdown should really trigger is not overwhelm and bewilderment, but a project to build a new global order in which we all have a stake. What the US chooses to do in terms of foreign and economic policy can affect your shopping basket and the very borders of the nation state in which you live. It remains the world’s largest economy, has the world’s largest military, and is the home of the world’s most powerful entertainment complex. This centrality combined with its collapse reveals the fact that the problem goes deeper than Trump. The world was always dangerously overexposed to whatever direction the US took.Ironically, this all might be the beginning of a process that leads to genuine “liberation days” for other countries, but not the US itself. There is pain ahead, but also a sort of independence. Above all, there might finally be a recognition that the US’s definition of peace and prosperity was always its own, enforced by sheer force of power and propaganda.

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

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      US deports 10 more alleged gang members to El Salvador, says Rubio

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      The US has deported another 10 people that it alleges are gang members to El Salvador, secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Sunday, a day before that country’s president is due to visit the White House.“Last night, another 10 criminals from the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua Foreign Terrorist Organizations arrived in El Salvador,” Rubio said in an Twitter/X post.The alliance between Donald Trump and El Salvador president Nayib Bukele “has become an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere”, Rubio added.The US president is due to meet Bukele at the White House on Monday.Trump said on Saturday he was looking forward to meeting Bukele and praised him for taking “enemy aliens” from the United States. He said the two countries were working closely to “eradicate terrorist organizations”.Administration officials have repeatedly made public statements alleging that detained immigrants are gang members that they have not backed up in court.The Trump administration has deported hundreds of Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.Lawyers and relatives of the migrants held in El Salvador say they are not gang members and had no opportunity to contest the US government assertion that they were. The Trump administration says it vetted migrants to ensure they belonged to Tren de Aragua, which it labels a terrorist organization.The deportations have been challenged in federal court. The US supreme court said the US government must give sufficient notice to immigrant detainees to allow them to contest their deportations. It did not say how those already in El Salvador could seek judicial review of their removals.The White House has come under fire recently after a Maryland man was wrongly deported to El Salvador last month. He was deported on one of three high-profile deportation flights to El Salvador made up chiefly of Venezuelans whom the government had accused of being gang members and assumed special powers to expel without a hearing.Trump administration lawyers were able to confirm on Saturday that Kilmar Abrego García, 29, remains confined in a notorious prison in El Salvador. However, the White House did not detail the steps it was taking to return Abrego García to the United States. More

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      US stock markets expected to recover after Trump drops tariffs on mobiles

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      US stock markets were expected to stage a recovery on Monday after Donald Trump excluded imports of smartphones and laptops from his tariff regime late on Friday night.Shares in Apple and chip maker Nvidia were on course to soar after tariffs on their products imported into the US were lifted for 90 days.The temporary reprieve was widely seen as a climbdown after pressure from Republican leaders concerned that the soaring cost of smartphones would spark a voter backlash. US retailers import about 80% of all smartphones, many of them from China, which Trump has slapped with tariffs totalling 145%.US Customs and Border Protection said items like laptops, hard drives, smartphones, flat-panel monitors and some chips would qualify for the exemption. Vital machines made outside the US that are used to make semiconductors were also excluded.It means these products will avoid the China tariff and the 10% baseline tariffs applied on other countries caught by the new regime.Speaking on Air Force One on Saturday evening, Trump said he would be more specific about the latest exemption rules on Monday. “We’ve been making a lot of money,” he said. “It’s been the other way around. Other countries, in particular China was making a lot of money.”It is not clear how long the exemption will last or whether separate tariffs will be negotiated on the specific products.China has responded with a tariff on all US exports of 125%. Beijing said at the weekend that the reprieve for smartphones was a “small step” toward easing the trade fight between the world’s two biggest economies.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHowever, the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said the reprieve was likely to be lifted in 90 days and reiterated Trump’s longstanding plan to apply a different, specific levy to the sector.Speaking on NBC, he said: “All those products are going to come under semiconductors, and they’re going to have a special focus-type of tariff to make sure that those products get reshored. We can’t be relying on China for fundamental things that we need.”Lutnick dismissed interpretations of Trump’s reprieve that argued it reflected the president’s realisation that his China tariffs were unlikely to shift more manufacturing of smartphones, computers and other gadgets to the US in the near future.On Sunday Trump warned that no country would be getting “off the hook” on his punishing tariffs, again singling out China for criticism. “NOBODY is getting ‘off the hook’ for the unfair Trade Balances,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. “Especially not China which, by far, treats us the worst!”Apple has spent decades building up a finely tuned supply chain in east Asia, including inside China. The firm has pledged to move some facilities back to the US over the next four years, which will cost it $500bn, including constructing a giant factory in Texas for artificial intelligence servers but was expecting to retain much of its international network as it expands its sales.Trump’s move at the start of April to impose tariffs on imports to the US battered the stocks of tech’s magnificent seven – Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla, Google parent Alphabet and Facebook parent Meta Platforms.At one point, they lost $2.1tn, or 14% of their value, from 2 April. Shares have recovered since last Wednesday after Trump paused the tariffs except on China, allowing tech firms to use India and other conduits to import smartphones. More

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      Civilian deaths in Sumy attack may force Washington to get tough with Putin

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      Even by the warped standards of wartime, Russia’s Sunday morning attack on Sumy was astonishingly brazen. Two high-speed ballistic missiles, armed, Ukraine says, with cluster munitions, slammed into the heart of the border city in mid-morning as families went to church, waited for a theatre performance or were simply strolling about on a mild spring day.The death toll currently stands at 34, including two children. Images from the scene show bodies or body bags on the ground, a trolley bus and cars burnt out, rubble and glass scattered around. It was reckless, cruel and vicious and its consequences entirely predictable to those who gave the order and pressed “launch”.To contemplate a daytime city-centre attack, in the full knowledge that civilians will be present, reflects a Russian culture of impunity that has been allowed to endure without effective challenge. Nevertheless, Washington’s approach, under Donald Trump, has been to try to negotiate an end to the war by talking directly with Moscow, while remaining mostly silent on Russian attacks on civilians.Talks between the US and Russia have continued unabated over the past two months at a time when Russian attacks on Ukraine’s cities appear to have stepped up. Nine adults and nine children were killed when a Russian ballistic missile using cluster bombs struck a children’s playground in Kryvyi Rih at the end of last week.People were burned alive in their cars and the bodies of children were found dead in the playground, yet the attack was weakly condemned by the US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, who, toeing the White House line, would not say the deadly missile was from Russia as she tweeted: “This is why the war must end.”Brink has since announced she will step down and been more forthright. On Sunday, the ambassador attributed the Sumy attack to Russia and repeated that it appeared cluster bombs had been used. But now that she is on her way out, it is easier for her to speak her mind while Russia’s Vladimir Putin toys with Trump and the rest of the US administration in peace talks that have hardly developed in two months.View image in fullscreenOn Friday, the Russian leader spent four hours in talks with Steve Witkoff, a donor real estate developer who has become a key Trump adviser on Ukraine as well as the Middle East. What they talked about is unclear, but reports suggest Witkoff has been pushing the idea that the quickest way to get Russia to agree a ceasefire in Ukraine is to force Kyiv to hand over the entirety of four provinces that are only partly occupied by Russia’s military, including the cities of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.The dissonance between the killing and destruction in Sumy on Sunday and the photographed handshake between Witkoff and Putin is all too evident to most observers. It is not clear why it should even be contemplated that Ukraine hand over territory (something that even the US cannot easily force on Kyiv) when Russia is willing to countenance daytime attacks on civilians.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Moscow believes, and acts like it believes, it can get away with it. The Kremlin will ignore condemnation from European leaders and wait for the news cycle to move on – and will almost certainly continue to attack Ukrainian cities to little military purpose. Not only are drone attacks commonplace, but there are now concerns they are routinely being armed with cluster munitions, while almost every day one or two hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles are thrown into the deadly mix.In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hopes that gradually Trump will realise Putin is not negotiating in good faith. Certainly, the attack on the centre of Sumy hardly suggests a strong appetite for peace. But it is unclear at what point, if any, the White House is prepared to conclude that killing of civilians means that it needs to put genuine pressure on Russia to negotiate rather than indulge the Kremlin. More

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      No retreat on tariffs, Trump promised. Hours later, he blinked

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      He vowed: “My policies will never change.” He insisted: “Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.” He boasted: “I know what I’m doing.” And at 9.33am on Wednesday, he entreated: “BE COOL. Everything is going to work out well.”But less than four hours later, Donald Trump blinked. As the economic and political pressure became unbearable, the US president announced on social media that he would pause for 90 days higher trade tariffs for most countries, excluding China.It was a dramatic climbdown by a leader who has spent years cultivating the image of a strongman able to project indifference through every storm. White House aides immediately swung into gear, attempting to spin the retreat as the masterstroke of peerless dealmaker and genius chess player.The damage had been done, however. Damage to America’s standing as an honest broker and dependable ally. Damage to the US dollar and financial system as the world’s anchor of financial stability. And damage to Trump’s reputation on his signature issue, the economy, in the eyes of business leaders, Republicans and voters.“It’s obviously far too soon to talk about a failed presidency, but to me there are clear indications that Donald Trump’s presidency is endangered,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “That’s an extraordinary statement for month three, but he’s taken such extreme measures and the responses are unusual, particularly for Republicans. They’re very demonstrative and they’re very directed at his power.”The past two weeks have witnessed the most volatile period for financial markets since the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns five years ago. This time, however, the cause is not a highly contagious virus but the grievances and whims of one man.On 2 April, standing in the White House Rose Garden, Trump announced sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of countries, billing it as a “declaration of economic independence” on a “liberation day” that would restore America’s “golden age”. After decades of getting ripped off, he claimed, “it’s our turn to prosper”.The tariffs were calculated based on a country’s trade deficit with the US divided by the value of goods imported from that country. The formula was immediately criticised for inaccuracies and absurdities, such as assigning tariffs to Heard Island and McDonald Islands, which are inhabited entirely by penguins.Yet in Trump’s telling, the long-threatened tariffs were a necessary measure to restore US manufacturing and address trade imbalances. The Rose Garden event was attended by workers in hard hats and yellow construction vests – a reminder of how Trump has sought to steal Democrats’ identity as the party of the working class.Some analysts on the left and the right agree that the US industrial midwest was hit hard by globalisation with factories shuttered, communities hollowed out and jobs shipped overseas. But few believe that Trump, who for decades has believed that the US is getting ripped off, and his sledgehammer approach to tariffs are the right solution.Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “I have always believed that his understanding of when America was great was in the 1950s and 1960s, when 30% of the workforce was in manufacturing and when the rest of the world was flat on its back and America bestrode the world like a colossus.“His dream is to restore that America to the greatest extent possible, and he genuinely believes that high tariff walls will force people who are doing manufacturing in China and all across south-east Asia and elsewhere to come here.”Galston added: “It is, most economists would say, a fantasy that could make a difference at the margins. Right now, manufacturing employment in the United States as a share of the total is 8%, down from its peak above 30% in the 1970s, and that’s not going to be reversed.”Trump had effectively taken the world economy hostage. The repercussions were immediate and widespread, including market instability, strong international condemnation, retaliatory measures from China and deep uncertainty for businesses and consumers.View image in fullscreenLarry Summers, a former treasury secretary, described it as “the biggest self-inflicted wound we’ve put on our economy in history”. Some chief executives who had backed Trump in last year’s election expressed buyer’s remorse as their fortunes sank. Tech giants such as Apple saw their stock prices drop; analysts predicted potential price increases for iPhones by as much as 43%.In the White House, Trump’s closest advisers were rattled. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, engaged in a highly public and insulting feud with Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro over the impact of tariffs on Tesla, calling Navarro a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks”.Trump insisted he was right and elite opinion was wrong. As he blithely golfed over the weekend, even as markets crashed and haemorrhaged trillions of dollars, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, flew to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to plea for a strategy that could include improved trade deals with foreign countries.Republicans were anxious as they heard the complaints of constituents worried about retirement savings. Some spoke out or considered legislation to curb Trump’s tariffs power. Senator Ted Cruz, a staunch Trump supporter, warned: “Tariffs are a tax on consumers, and I’m not a fan of jacking up taxes on American consumers.”It was a notable break from a party long criticised for a sycophantic, cultish devotion to Trump on all other issues. James Bennet, a columnist for the Economist magazine, told the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast: “There are limits to how far Donald Trump can go and it is conceivable that Republicans could rise up against him.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“They haven’t been willing to do it as Donald Trump has embarked on this campaign of retribution, using the justice department to punish his foes. They haven’t been willing to do it over speech issues or the deportation of completely innocent people to a prison in El Salvador. But these tariffs were a step too far for them and that’s a signal that there is the possibility of Republican resistance at some point to this administration, which is the only thing that can really restrain it.”The mounting pressure from Republicans, business leaders and financial markets stoked fears of a recession that could even tip into a depression. Finally, Trump yielded and, on Wednesday, announced a 90-day pause for most countries while inviting them to negotiate bilateral trade deals.Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist, said: “He saw the pressure from not only the American people but he saw people from within his own ecosystem screaming and yelling about how bad this was. Donald Trump has a history of caving because he is a paper tiger leader in many ways and this was just further proof of that. He wants to play hardball but with a soft bat.”White House aides argued otherwise, deploying the Trump playbook learned from his lawyer Roy Cohn: always claim victory and never admit defeat. Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, tweeted: “You have been watching the greatest economic master strategy from an American president in history.”But the president himself admitted that he had been monitoring the bond market and people were “getting a little queasy” as bond prices had fallen and interest rates increased. He said: “People were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy.”Even Trump, whose second term has been characterised by audacity, impunity and brazen lies, had reached the capacity of his reality distortion field and its amplification by rightwing media. The cold facts of the market were not to be denied.Kurt Bardella, a strategic communications adviser, said: “We’re seeing now, for the first time in Trump 2, the limitations of propaganda, of drinking your own Kool-Aid. There are economic realities, market realities that are larger than the lie that they tell themselves and the American people over and over again. Their attempt to try to sell that lie to the world clearly did not work.“He can go out there all day long till he’s blue in the face and say to friendly media and his Maga puppets [that] we’re being ripped off and this will lead to the greatest economic boom we’ve ever seen – but no one else is believing it. The private sector that he has propped himself up on for so long completely rejected all of this.”Bardella, a former congressional aide, added: “For all the ‘Let’s run the government like a business’ crowd, if any business ran themselves this way there would be a vote of no confidence and that CEO would be ousted that very day for deliberately tanking that company’s own stock.”After an initial surge, the markets dipped again. While the pause has offered a temporary reprieve, a 10% blanket duty on almost all US imports remains in effect. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, claimed on Friday that more than 75 countries have contacted the Trump administration with a view to addressing trade issues. “The phones have been ringing off the hook to make deals,” she said.But it remains uncertain whether the US will be able to secure significant concessions from other countries within 90 days. The mercurial nature of Trump’s decision-making on the on-again, off-again levies could add to the whiplash while eroding faith in the US and the reliability of the dollar.And the trade war with China continues to escalate, posing a significant threat to the global economy. Trump raised tariffs on China to 145%, prompting retaliation. US consumers are likely to feel the pain from price hikes on clothing and other products. China also threatened further non-tariff measures, such as blacklisting US companies and restricting exports of rare earth minerals.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “It’s not over at all. The worst part is probably ahead because of China. Is he going to work out a deal with all these other countries? Get real. He has scrambled everything and America is no longer trusted in any sphere now – defence, international relations, economics. It’s sad.” More

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      Price hike on Shein? How Trump tariffs could shift the US’s love of fast fashion

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      After a chaotic week of flip-flopping tariff policies, cheap clothes from China are nearly certain to face a steep price hike soon – prompting concern among fast fashion retailers and potentially pushing consumers to look for other alternatives.As part of a package of global tariff policies announced on “liberation day” last week, Donald Trump signed an executive order that ended a duty-free exemption for low-priced goods to enter the US from China and Hong Kong. Known as the “de-minimis” rule, packages under $800 do not qualify for any taxes or tariffs on the goods and are inspected minimally at the border.Conceived as a means to allow Americans to bring back low-cost goods to the US from abroad, fast fashion giants including Shein and Temu have used the rule to send low-cost e-commerce purchases to the US with few expenses.Alon Rotem, the chief strategy officer for ThredUp, an online thrift store, welcomed the executive order.“With the proliferation of fast fashion, this is something we’ve really supported because it creates an unfair competitive advantage,” he said.Ending the de-minimis rule has been a target of bipartisan legislators in recent years as the value of goods entering the US under the rule soared from about $5.5bn in 2018 to $66bn in 2023, according to a congressional report. Nearly two-thirds of packages under the rule were shipped from China and Hong Kong, said a US International Trade Commission briefing.ThredUp has pushed for legislation to end the de-minimis rule through the American Circular Textiles, a trade group it helped found that advocates for strengthening domestic supply chains. Other members include the RealReal, Reformation and H&M.“This change was coming,” said Derek Lossing, the founder of Cirrus Global Advisors, a global logistics firm. “Maybe it’ll catch consumers by surprise, but it’s ultimately not catching the brands significantly by surprise.”Some companies have already begun diversifying their production outside of China. Others have evolved their business model to begin stocking more inventory in the US as well as moving some production here and then fulfilling orders domestically, Lossing added.Trump first announced the rule change in February, but then recanted in order to give border agents time to figure out how to address an influx of so many packages that will require more extensive inspection.It is currently expected to take effect 2 May. After that, the packages will be subject to a tariff rate of 30% or $25 an item, rising to $50 an item on 1 June. When China responded with retaliatory tariffs this week, Trump hit back and then tripled the rates for previously exempt packages to 90% or $75 an item, rising to $150 on 1 June.“Everyone’s just pulling up their pants and bracing for impact,” said Jason Wong, who works in product logistics for Temu in Hong Kong. “We know it’s going to be a mess.”Wong said one plan is to make more of a push into Europe as well as Australia, which has its own de-minimis rule that goods under $1,000 can enter the country without taxes or tariffs.“We know for a fact that the demand from the US and North America will significantly decrease,” he said.Shein and Temu did not respond to requests for comment about any shifts to their business model in response to the forthcoming rule change.Rotem, the ThredUp executive, said the rule change creates an opening for consumers to consider other options, including buying secondhand clothes. While he acknowledged that shoppers care about sustainability, he said it’s a secondary decision of consumers to price.“All of a sudden, if ultra fast fashion is now 30% or so more expensive, it really does make the value proposition that much more compelling for resale,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSome retail experts cautioned that the rule change may not deter consumers from options like Shein or Temu, because many of their items are so inexpensive to begin with.“Americans’ love affair with cheap goods is not over,” said Jason Goldberd, chief commerce strategy officer at Publicis Groupe, a global communications firm. “Even with the tariffs, the products still may be attractively priced.”Rotem said he saw promise in the shift: “We’re never going to get this thing perfect, but the progress with public policy to encourage resale is something that we’re going to support.”While the de-minimis rule change remains intact for now, anxiety and confusion is also high amid a whiplash in policies and wild market swings. On Wednesday, Trump ordered a 90-day freeze on tariffs, though kept a 10% flat rate tariff intact and then raised tariff rates for China.“Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately,” Trump wrote.On Friday, China responded by raising its tariff rate to 125% as well. An official said it would not raise the tariff rate any further than that.Wong, who works in Temu logistics, said that there have been so many changes to the policies, that partly the move will be to simply keep watching for now.“We don’t know how long this de-minimis thing is going to last,” he said, adding that backlash from consumers could lead to yet another policy shift.Goldberg echoed that sentiment, calling it “a dynamic situation”.“It may be different tomorrow,” he said. More

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      Trump administration to exempt smartphones and computers from tariffs

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      Donald Trump’s presidential administration has exempted smartphones and computers from the 125% levies imposed on imports from China as well as other reciprocal tariffs, which experts had cautioned might cause electronic consumer prices to dramatically spike in the US.The announcement was made late on Friday in a US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) notice that said the devices would be excluded from the 10% global tariff that Trump recently imposed on most countries, along with the much heftier import tax on China.The CBP’s notice follows concerns from tech companies that the price of electronics for US consumers might surge with many of them manufactured in China. The notice also contained exemptions for additional electronics and components, such as memory cards, solar cells and semiconductors.The exclusions were applied retroactively to the products under the reciprocal tariffs beginning at 12.01am ET on 5 April, according to the notice.“Importers may request a refund by filing a post summary correction for unliquidated entries, or by filing a protest for entries that have liquidated but where the liquidation is not final because the protest period has not expired,” the CBP said.On Saturday, Trump released a statement of “clarification of exceptions” pertaining to the previous evening’s announcement. Speaking to CNBC, Dan Ives, the global head of technology research at the Los Angeles-based financial services firm Wedbush Securities, said on Saturday: “This is the dream scenario for tech investors … Smartphones, chips being excluded is a game-changer scenario when it comes to China tariffs.”Ives added: “I think ultimately big tech CEOs spoke loudly, and the White House had to understand and listen to the situation that this would have been Armageddon for big tech if it were implemented.”Similarly, Paul Ashworth, Capital Economics’ chief north America economist, said that the tariff exceptions “represent a partial de-escalation of president Trump’s trade war with China”.“There were even bigger winners in Asia, however, since the exemptions apply to all countries – not only China. At a stroke, 64% of US imports from Taiwan are now exempt from the 10% reciprocal tariff, 44% from Malaysia, and almost 30% from both Vietnam and Thailand. Ten to 12% of imports from India, Korea and Mexico will also now be exempt,” Ashworth added.“These exemptions will presumably not be the last either, with the success of Apple’s Tim Cook in getting its smartphones exempted likely to boost the lobbying by firms in other sectors.”Since Trump announced his tariffs, Apple was among the hardest hit tech companies – as 90% of its iPhones are reportedly assembled in China.Invoking imagery associated with the strongest classification for hurricanes, Ives had previously described the Chinese tariffs as a “category 5 price storm for the US consumer”. He added in a note to investors: “The reality is it would take three years and $30bn in our estimation to move even 10% of its supply chain from Asia to the US with major disruption in the process … For US consumers, the reality of a $1,000 iPhone being one of the best made consumer products on the planet would disappear.”According to analysts at the investment bank UBS, costs of iPhones would rise exponentially under Trump’s Chinese tariffs. The price of an iPhone 16 Pro Max (with 256GB of storage) could rise by 79% from $1,199 (£915) to about $2,150 (£1,600), the Guardian reported earlier.In attempts to mitigate the blow of Trump’s tariffs, Apple reportedly chartered cargo flights to transport iPhones from its Indian factories, with Reuters reporting the company having flown 600 tons of iPhones – or approximately 1.5m devices – to the US since March.Meanwhile, China’s Semiconductor Industry Association (CSIA) announced that the country’s “retaliatory” tariffs on US imports were limited to chips made in the US. Chips manufactured in Taiwan and South Korea remain unaffected.According to the CSIA, the “country of origin” for integrated circuits would be determined by the location of the manufacturing facility, not the final packaging or design location, CGTN reportsed. In other words, US chipmakers that outsource manufacturing to other parts of the world are exempt from China’s “retaliatory” tariffs.The latest announcement from the CSIA came as China slapped 125% tariffs on US products on Friday as part of the latest trade-war escalation between the two trade giants. More