President Donald Trump set the stock market up for another whirlwind week on Sunday with another apparent U-turn on his controversial tariff plans.
Trump said there was “no tariff exception announced on Friday” after U.S. Customs and Border Protection published guidelines to exempt certain electronics from his duties. The document in question was quite literally named “Reciprocal Tariff Exclusion for Specified Products.”
The CBP’s notice to shippers indicated that a wide range of tech devices and parts, including phones, laptops, and memory chips, were exempt from the 125-percent reciprocal tariffs on China—a move hailed by Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives as “the most bullish news we could have heard this weekend.”
However, in a Sunday afternoon Truth Social post, Trump clarified that “these products are subject to the existing 20% Fentanyl Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket.‘”
“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 which, by far, treats us the worst!” he wrote, adding that the administration would review the entire economics supply chain in an upcoming “National Security Tariff Investigation.”
“What has been exposed is that we need to make products in the United States, and that we will not be held hostage by other Countries, especially hostile trading Nations like China, which will do everything within its power to disrespect the American People,” Trump said.
Earlier Sunday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick confused market watchers even further by telling ABC’s This Week that the exemption from reciprocal tariffs was only temporary—as a separate “semiconductor tariff” is coming at a later date.
“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,” Lutnick said. “We need to have semiconductors, we need to have chips, and we need to have flat panels—we need to have these things made in America. We can’t be reliant on Southeast Asia for all of the things that operate for us.”
Fox Business correspondent Charles Gasparino reported that Lutnick’s comments stirred “significant division” inside the White House.
“I am told plenty of people really believe he is ‘off message’ of trying to create a trade regime that involves negotiations even with China and actions that don’t roil the markets including the all-important bond market,” Gasparino wrote on X.
In a Sunday interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, top White House aide Stephen Miller said the administration had always intended to deal with chips and semiconductors separately through Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act.
The provision allows the president to impose trade restrictions like tariffs for national security reasons.
“That was always the plan because those components are so essential to our national security, we need to have a separate process for dealing with how to reassure those essential industries,” Miller said.
The White House deputy also said the CBP guidelines were created to explain the tariff rates and how they’re applied.
“There are no exemptions,” he said. “This is a sophisticated, elegant, detailed plan to deal with Chinese economic aggression.”
Not everyone seems to agree. Conservative broadcaster Piers Morgan urged Trump in an X post to get his team’s act together.
“The mixed messaging re tariffs from Trump’s top team is ridiculously self-harming,” he wrote. “Sort them out, Mr President - or chaos will continue to reign.”
