| | | Now it's on, now it's off, now other stuff is on, then electronics is on again.... round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows.
China Halts Critical Exports as Trade War Intensifies
April 13, 2025
in News
China has suspended exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets, threatening to choke off supplies of components central to automakers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies and military contractors around the world.
Shipments of the magnets, essential for assembling everything from cars and drones to robots and missiles, have been halted at many Chinese ports while the Chinese government drafts a new regulatory system. Once in place, the new system could permanently prevent supplies from reaching certain companies, including American military contractors.
continues at dnyuz.com
Amid trade war ambiguity, Trump signals he will place further tariffs on Chinese tech'
These are things that are national security,' says U.S. commerce secretary
Thomson Reuters · Posted: Apr 13, 2025 3:06 PM EDT | Last Updated: 3 hours ago
U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday bore down on his administration's latest message that the exclusion of smartphones and computers from his "reciprocal" tariffs on China will be short-lived, pledging a national security trade investigation into the semiconductor sector.
Those electronics "are just moving to a different Tariff 'bucket,'" Trump said in a social media post. "We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations."
The White House had announced the exclusions from steep reciprocal tariffs on Friday.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick earlier Sunday said that critical technology products from China would face separate new duties, along with semiconductors, within the next two months.
The exclusions announced on Friday were seen as a big break for technology companies such as Apple and Dell Technologies that rely on imports from China.
Trump's back-and-forth moves on tariffs have kicked off a trade war with China and prompted the wildest swings on Wall Street since the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in early 2020. The benchmark S&P 500 index is down more than 10 per cent since Trump took office on Jan. 20.
Lutnick said Trump would enact "a special focus-type of tariff" on smartphones, computers and other electronics products in a month or two, alongside sectoral tariffs targeting semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. He said those new levies would fall outside Trump's so-called reciprocal tariffs, under which total levies on Chinese imports climbed to 145 per cent this week."He's saying they're exempt from the reciprocal tariffs, but they're included in the semiconductor tariffs, which are coming in probably a month or two," Lutnick said in an interview on ABC's This Week, predicting that the levies would bring production of those products to the United States.
"These are things that are national security, that we need to be made in America," he said.
continues at cbc.ca |
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