More from US tariffs: how Trump’s tax is hitting Big Tech and beyond
The marketplace runs on small businesses all over the world — but Donald Trump’s tariffs are causing uncertainty. In a blog post today, Etsy CEO Josh Silverman said the company will add features like shopping pages surfacing domestic sellers, which could be useful for shoppers who want to avoid tariffs.
Etsy also updated its seller handbook with a tariff section providing advice. It’s an interesting look into the many moving parts of global trade that are upended by Trump’s trade war.
Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen offers an air-, sea-, and ground-level view on the tariff chaos.
The semiconductor giant reported a 60 percent jump in Q1 profits, to NTD$361.56 billion (USD$10.9 billion), and is sticking with its forecast for 2025 revenue growth. Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says there’s been “no changes” in demand following Trump’s tariffs, with chips next in the president’s crosshairs.
That doesn’t mean it’s ignoring the tariffs entirely though — they’re partly to thank for new efforts to accelerate the launch of its two upcoming US chip plants.
[asia.nikkei.com]
Acer announced four new gaming laptops for its entry-level Nitro line, each configurable with Nvidia RTX 5060 or 5070 Ti GPUs, but none of them have US pricing or availability. Likely due to tariff uncertainty, Acer’s press release says, “US availability and pricing to be announced closer to local availability.”
We don’t know when that will be, but for now Acer announced EU pricing (see image gallery).
Bloomberg reports that local airlines have been told to refuse further deliveries of Boeing jets, in another blow for a beleaguered aerospace company that’s suffered from quality crises and layoffs.
Any Boeing imports would be hit by China’s 125 percent retaliatory tariff on US goods anyway, including a number of finished planes already earmarked for Chinese airlines. Boeing lags behind Airbus in China, and this isn’t going to help.
[bloomberg.com]
Semiconductor tariffs could be on the way, The New York Times reports:
Federal notices put online Monday afternoon said the administration had initiated national security investigations into imports of chips and pharmaceuticals. Mr. Trump has suggested that those investigations could result in tariffs.
The company’s website is pushing a “Once In A Springtime Event” that involves buying a pre-tariff Infiniti before Trump’s automotive tariff “debacle” cranks prices up.
China is an essential part of the world’s supply chains — just ask small businesses who’ve tried to make products in the US. Earlier this year a family-run company told me how it was impossible to manufacture certain playing cards domestically. Wired spoke with small businesses about the skill, machinery, factories, and expertise that only exist in China.
China announced export restrictions to the US on some rare earth minerals on April 4th in retaliation to Trump’s tariffs, and the New York Times has a deep dive on the limits set for rare earth magnets, 90 percent of which are produced in China:
If factories in Detroit and elsewhere run out of powerful rare earth magnets, that could prevent them from assembling cars and other products with electric motors that require these magnets. Companies vary widely in the size of their emergency stockpiles for such contingencies, so the timing of production disruptions is hard to predict.
The affected motors can be found in electric cars, drones, robots, missiles, and spacecraft, and to control steering in gas-powered cars, for example.
CNBC points out a US Customs notice about a glitch affecting the code that’s supposed to exempt freight already on the water from the new tariffs, whether from countries under the 90-day delay / 10 percent hike, or China’s increased 145 percent rate.
Normally, when a U.S. importer pays for their freight, they file both the cargo release forms and their financial papers, so they can pay for their cargo. To keep the cargo moving, Customs is advising importers to file the cargo release form now, and file the financial form later, once the glitch is corrected.
For now, that means the tariffs are not being collected by the U.S. government
Specifically, “the continuing uncertainty of the tariff environment,” according to a press release.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen told the Financial Times that the bloc’s laws regulating Big Tech, including the DMA and DSA, are “untouchable” in trade negotiations with the US. They occasionally generate substantial fines on Silicon Valley companies.
What’s not off the table? Retaliatory measures like a new digital advertising tax targeting tech revenue at the source — in contrast to the UK, which already has a similar tax it’s considering watering down.
Tesla has stopped taking orders in China for new Model S and Model X EVs, which are manufactured exclusively in California and imported. With tariffs now at 125 percent on US imports, you can guess why.
It will still sell its Model 3 and updated Model Y, which are built in Shanghai and make up the overwhelming majority of its Chinese sales — Reuters reports it imported fewer than 2,000 S and X vehicles in 2024.
Three excellent pieces by Mark Gurman, John Gruber, and Ben Thompson recently published that explain why Apple can’t move iPhone production back to the USA. There is no tariff percentage that will result in a US-based “army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones.” As Steve Jobs told President Obama back in 2011, “those jobs aren’t coming back.”
That’s one tidbit from Andy Jassy’s interview with CNBC today, where he was also asked about things like AI and Amazon’s rumored bid for TikTok. Jassy published a lengthy annual letter to shareholders today, too.
Below is a portion of CNBC’s interview.
