Trump will explain tariffs on electronics on Monday

The administration announced late Friday that some electronics were exempt.

ByDavid Brennan, Alexandra Hutzler, and Ivan Pereira
Last Updated: April 13, 2025, 11:43 PM EDT

President Donald Trump on Sunday said there will be no exceptions for tariffs on electronics and that he would clarify his administration's policy on Monday.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced late Friday that some smartphones, computers, chips and other electronics would be exempted from tariffs, but Trump's top economic advisers hit the Sunday talk shows to explain the policy, saying that tariffs against electronics would be coming in the next month or two.

“There was no Tariff ‘exemption’ announced on Friday," Trump posted Sunday afternoon, and that semiconductor tariffs will “just be moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket.’”

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Here's how the news is developing.
Apr 06, 2025, 9:14 PM EDT

Trump addresses stock market losses after his tariffs announcement

While speaking with reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, President Donald Trump said he didn't crash the stock market on purpose and that he doesn't know what will happen to the market, but believes the country will come out stronger.

"Now what's going to happen with the market? I can't tell you, but I can tell you, our country has gotten a lot stronger, and eventually it'll be a country like no other, it'll be the most dominant country economically in the world," Trump said.

President Donald Trump walks to deliver remarks on tariffs, in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, D.C., April 2, 2025.
Leah Millis/Reuters

Asked if there's a pain in the market he's unwilling to tolerate, Trump said he doesn't want anything to go down.

"I don't want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something and we have such a horrible -- we have been treated so badly by other countries because we had stupid leadership that allowed this to happen," the president added.

-ABC News' Hannah Demissie

Apr 06, 2025, 12:53 PM EDT

Economic adviser denies Trump’s tanking markets to force rate cuts

Despite Trump’s reposting of a video that claimed he’s purposely crashing the stock market, the president’s top economic adviser on Sunday denied that’s his strategy.

On ABC News’ “This Week,” anchor George Stephanopoulos pointed out the post on Trump’s Truth Social platform to White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett and asked if he was trying to drive markets down to force the Fed to lower interest rates.

On Friday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said at a conference that Trump's tariff policy will hike prices and slow economic growth. Minutes before Powell spoke, Trump posted on Truth Social, "This would be a PERFECT time for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to cut Interest Rates,” and claimed without evidence that political considerations have played a role in Powell's decision-making on interest-rate policy.

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett speaks to members of the media outside of the West Wing of the White House, in Washington, D.C., March 19, 2025.
Kent Nishimura/Reuters, FILE

Pressed by Stephanopoulos on the post, Hassett said the White House respected the Fed’s independence and denied that Trump was trying to pressure it to lower rates.

“It is not a strategy for the markets to crash. It's a strategy to create a golden age in America for the American worker. That's his strategy,” Hassett said.

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