The Trump administration signaled on Sunday that it would pursue new tariffs on the powerful computer chips inside smartphones and other technologies, just two days after it excluded a variety of electronics from the steep import taxes recently applied on goods arriving from China.
The push came as President Trump’s top economic advisers scrambled to explain their shifting strategy, after having insisted for weeks they would shield no company or industry from any of the fees it has levied in a bid to reset U.S. trade relationships.
The reprieve for technology companies arrived in the form of a Customs and Border Protection rule issued late Friday that spared high-tech imports from Mr. Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs, including those on China. While the president paused a set of punishing levies on nearly 60 countries last week, his administration has forged ahead with a new 145 percent tax on Chinese exports, which Washington announced after Beijing retaliated against the United States.
The exclusions in the C.B.P. rule covered a wide slate of products, such as computers, smartphones, modems and flash drives, and it represented a major victory for Apple, Nvidia and other U.S. technology giants, which rely on Chinese factories to help manufacture important components and popular devices.
But on Sunday, the Trump administration sought to cast those exemptions in a different light, framing them as only a temporary break while the government prepares more targeted taxes on semiconductor imports in the coming weeks. To Mr. Trump and his top aides, the United States sources too many of its chips from abroad, threatening the nation’s national and economic security.
Peter Navarro, a senior White House adviser on trade, insisted on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that they were “not exclusions” at all. Instead, he stressed that the White House still could impose specific tariffs on the computer chips that power countless consumer and military products.
Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, said on ABC’s “This Week” that Mr. Trump could announce new tariffs “in the next month or two” that would target not only semiconductors but also pharmaceutical imports. He added that the administration could act as soon as next week to open an investigation into the semiconductor industry, setting the stage for the government to impose new tariffs on national security grounds.
The approach appears to mirror the process that yielded Mr. Trump’s tariffs on other specific products and sectors, including high fees he imposed on foreign cars and auto parts.
And Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, told CNN’s “State of the Union” that it was “always the case” that some of these high-tech imports would be subject to their own tariffs, separate from those broadly imposed on countries in response to their trade practices.
“Semiconductors are a key important part of a lot of defense equipment,” Mr. Hassett added, saying, “I don’t think anything really should be a surprise.”
Jamieson Greer, the top U.S. trade official, described the move on CBS’s “Face the Nation” as more of a mechanical change, saying of semiconductors that it is “not that they won’t be subject to tariffs” but that they are being done under a “different regime.”
The potential for new tariffs threatened to cast another pall over the tech industry, even as major lobbying groups representing Intel, Nvidia and other tech companies have encouraged the administration to strike trade deals that ultimately lower trade barriers globally.
“The mass confusion created by this constant news flow out of the White House is dizzying for the industry and investors and creating massive uncertainty and chaos for companies trying to plan their supply chain, inventory and demand,” Dan Ives, an analyst for Wedbush Securities, said in a note to investors on Sunday.
Ultimately, new taxes on chip imports could make it more expensive for U.S. companies to produce smartphones and other devices, cutting into their profits or forcing them to raise prices on American consumers. For Apple, in particular, the tit for tat between the United States and China caused the tech giant to lose more than $770 billion in market capitalization in just the opening days of Mr. Trump’s trade war.
Since then, the two nations have continued to retaliate against each other, causing financial markets around the world to whipsaw in the face of a persistent and costly standoff. U.S. consumers even appeared to rush out to purchase new iPhones last week, anticipating that a protracted trade conflict could push up prices.
Tripp Mickle and Ana Swanson contributed to this report.
