White House bizarrely denies the existence of Apple’s tariff exemption

In the tariff saga’s latest baffling twist, President Trump claimed Sunday that the exemption announced Friday for imported electronics simply does not exist.

In a lengthy post to Truth Social (via HuffPost), the president insisted that “NOBODY is getting ‘off the hook’” and that “There was no Tariff ‘exception’ announced on Friday.” This is confusing because U.S. Customs and Border Protection absolutely did publish a list of exempted products on that day.

Trump’s rationale for denying exemptions exists is that “These products are subject to the existing 20% Fentanyl Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket.’ The Fake News knows this, but refuses to report it.”

However, the claim made by media outlets this weekend was no more and no less than the simple and factual statement that a wide range of electronics, including nearly all of Apple’s products, were being made exempt from the latest round of reciprocal tariffs. Macworld noted at the time that the so-called “fentanyl” tariffs appeared to remain in effect, but this does not change the fact that official sources had indicated that other far larger 125 percent tariffs on China imports no longer applied.

We also noted that any exemptions could well be temporary and that the entire saga has been unpredictable. If the White House intends to apply a different “bucket” of tariffs to imported electronics in the future, that too does not contradict or refute the overall media coverage of the exemptions. And the government made no such indication in its announcement of the Reciprocal Tariff Exclusion.

Macworld takes no pleasure in contradicting the president in this way and would be happy to never cover tariffs again. Sadly, because Apple manufactures so many iPhones in China, the tariffs stand to impact the company’s customers through price rises. We will continue to note future changes in policy and their likely effect on Apple’s operations.