National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett is asked if iPhones will get a tariff exemption.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00With these new tariffs on semiconductors, the president yesterday said there would be some flexibility for different industries or different specific products. Do you think iPhones would be included in that as an exception?
00:13The specifics of the 232 law are very well known, and you should maybe bring in some legal experts to explain them, but 232 is an action that allows us to put tariff on things for national security.
00:25And so the example I like to use is if you have a cannon, but you're getting the cannonballs from an adversary, then if there were to be some kind of action, then you might run out of cannonballs, might not be a good thing.
00:36And so you can put a tariff on the cannonballs. And so in the 232 action, the courts upheld over and over the U.S.'s right to protect America by putting tariff on things that affect national security.
00:47And so there isn't any change in anything. It's just a question of what you say. Is this affecting national security or not? That there are experts, legal officials, and technical experts that decide what is and what isn't.
00:58And that's a progress that happens a little bit over time when these actions are announced. But in the end, it's not a question of exemption or not, but covered or not. And the covered or not is a technical and legal matter.
01:10But just to clarify that, would iPhones, for example, be something that would be covered as a national security?
01:17I'm the Ph.D. economist, so the specific matters go into the technical experts and the legal experts of the president.