Posted on 04/13/2025 11:10:57 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that President Donald Trump’s tariff exemptions on technology products like phones, computers and chips were temporary.
KARL: Let’s start with that news late Friday that this exemption on electronics, smartphones, laptop computers and the like. What’s the thinking? Why the exemption?
LUTNICK: Well, if you remember, over the past couple of months President Trump has called out pharmaceuticals and semiconductors and autos. He called them sector tariffs. And those are not available for negotiation. They are just going to be part of making sure we reshore the core national security items that need to be made in this country. We need to make medicine in this country. We learned it during Covid. We need to make it in this country. We need to make semiconductors. Because if we don’t own semiconductors here, remember, all – virtually all semiconductors are made now in Taiwan and they’re finished in China. It’s important that we reshore them.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
They’re starting to look like clowns. This is not good!
They change policies every 5 minutes.
If we cannot make a product, then we need to import. Once we get up to speed with production of a product then it’s tariff time. Why tariffs on autos? We make autos today, so protect and increase that demand.
Clowns? Please, get serious. This is what 5D chess actually looks like.
Maybe we should stop upgrading everything every 2 years. I get most of my stuff from Goodwill. I got my router my NAS my last 3 laptops and 2 desktops from goodwill. I admit I bought a new iPhone last Christmas and I recently bought a brand new mac mini from Costco but that is expected to be only once. in several years.
That’s where I get the majority of my shirts!
I agree.
Trump looks like he hasn’t given thought to his actions by constantly changing his actions. It appears he is making it up as he goes along. Not good for the President of the United States.
He needs to be a man with a plan.
This interview is an example of why the three letter TV companies are so despised.
If it is on ABC, CBS, or NBC, I won’t watch it.
The way that this has been rolled out has made it nearly impossible for many businesses to import goods that they need to keep their doors open. Business order things months in advance because of how long it takes to take a slow boat from China to the US. If a huge tax is added before the cargo arrives in the US the end cost can be prohibitive.
And the private and public entities and the underwriters that conduct international trade are unable to get their software updated in a timely enough manner to keep the system running smoothly. The 90 day “pause” should help get things back on track in many cases. But let’s hope that some adjustments will be made in how these things are rolled out in the future.
They seem to want all this manufacturing done over night, when anything even approaching what they want will take years, if not decades.
It seems like they’re picking favorites and playing by ear rather than doing deep dive analysis - but maybe that’s just me.
Trump and Lutnick should understand this.
Personally, I don’t care since we have all the computers, tvs, phones, cameras we’ll ever need. Maybe South Korea Taiwan, and Europe can filli the coming shortages.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, said today that the exceptions for phones, computers, etc are not really exceptions.
Yet, the CBP website calls the exceptions “Clarification of Exceptions”.
What a clown. And people wonder why there is some uncertainty.
This is opportunity knocking for smart entrepreneurs. Many electronic components were moved to China (and elsewhere) for no good reason other than Wall St. expected it and the public companies used offshoring to show they were responding to the demand for quarter-over-quarter improvements in profit. Now all those short-term decisions are going to come back to haunt them...
Most of those projects are manufactured with automation that reduces the direct labor content to near zero. Those automated factories can sit on US soil just as well and the support staff (higher skilled/paid jobs) filled by Americans. Costs of having a supply chain that stretches halfway around the globe will be eliminated, offsetting other costs.
Business decisions can be made by business people again, not political hacks.
We use computers and semiconductor and everything. If we cut off supply tomorrow, our economy would be done. It takes time to relocate production.
Boomers are easily upset when anyone brings dynamism and experimentation from the private business sector into government. The people who made a religion of an orgy in the mud named Woodstock have always been communist leaning ideologues. Looking at you.
Should have done it 40+ years ago
Many bought into the idea that the primary driver of manufacturing leaving the USA was the allure of cheap foreign labor, rather than intolerable domestic regulation. Removing or rewriting that regulation is a necessary prerequisite to bringing back even robotic manufacturing. Once a favorable regulatory framework is in place, manufacturing can probably return in a few years, rather than decades.
The scale of the manufacturing base they seem to envision will take decades to pull off due to the complex nature of component sourcing which will all have to be in place here before any complex facility is built - where the millions and millions of skilled vocational workers will come from is a mystery.
Tell that to Best Buy who has a cargo ship full of TVs and computers sailing across the Pacific right now and no idea what the tariff is going to be on these when they get offloaded in Los Angeles.
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