The Worst Thing Trump Did on 4/12/25

In the early morning hours of Saturday, someone tried to sneak something past the American people.

A US Customs Office official memo released a new series of product codes that were suddenly no longer impacted by Trump's 125% tariff on China. One of them was 8517.13.00.00, which corresponds to smartphones. 

It was part of a pretty stunning list of items now exempt from US tariffs on China, including other electronic devices (computers) and components, memory cards, semiconductors, and solar cells. These would constitute the majority of the largest Chinese imports to America.

That was a MASSIVE concession! It doesn't sound like China negotiated this, nor did the US get anything reciprocal from the Chinese to counter this massive walkback. Also, the White House never announced this, just quietly included the new product codes for an exemption in a Customs memo in the middle of the freaking night, on a weekend.

The near-sighted view points to the Trump administration finally understanding there is no current way to return smartphone manufacturing to the US.  Conservative estimates place a US-produced iPhone at a $3500 minimum, and that does not take into account the majority of the components still needing to be imported, hence those tariffs would still need to be applied to that final price. The entire tech sector must have screamed at Trump, Navarro, and the rest of the cavalcade of idiots to stop being so stupid. 

The long-sighted view paints a darker message here.  Trump DESPERATELY wants to put tariffs on China, so his acquiescing and allowing the largest items of Chinese import to come into the country without any comparable returns from China is HUGE! This is a confession that the US Economy has indeed been damaged by Trump's tariff stunt, and the administration is frantically trying to assure the rest of the world that the US is still the same economic investment it was before Wednesday. Considering the growing and expanding cracks in the foundational elements of the US Economy, I'm not sure the rest of the world cares anymore.

This was Trump caving, admitting he was wrong, and frantically trying to scream "Do Over!"  The man bankrupted a casino.  Now we see how he did it.