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After Market Tumult, Trump releases smartphones from huge new rates

    Shares in the American tech giant were one of the biggest victims of Wall Street in the days immediately after Trump announced his mutual rates. About $ 700 billion was wiped out the market value of Apple in a few days.

    Earlier this week, Trump said he would consider excluding American companies from his rates, but added that such decisions would be made “instinctively.”

    Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said that the exemptions reflected exceptions for smartphones and consumer electronics issued by Trump during his trade wars in 2018 and 2019.

    “We will have to wait and see if the exemptions will also be hanging this time, or whether the president again turns the course somewhere in the not too distant future,” Bown said.

    American customs and border protection referred questions about the order to the American International Trade Commission, which did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

    The White House confirmed that the new exemptions would not apply to 20 percent rates to all Chinese imports that Trump applied to respond to the role of China in fentanyl production.

    Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt of the White House said on Saturday that companies such as Apple, TSMC and Nvidia “had their production in the United States in the United States as quickly as possible” in the direction of the president “.

    “President Trump has made it clear that America cannot trust China to produce critical technologies such as semiconductors, chips, smartphones and laptops,” Leavitt said.

    Apple refused to comment.

    Economists have warned that the radical nature of Trump's rates – which apply to a wide range of common American consumer goods – reveal American inflation and gain economic growth.

    New York Fed Chief John Williams said that American inflation could reach up to 4 percent as a result of Trump's rates.

    Additional reporting by Michael Acton in San Francisco

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