Trump tariff fine print reveal raft of exemptions

Trump tariff fine print reveal raft of exemptions The carve-outs in the White House's new duties are more expansive than previous rounds of tariffs from this administration. 07/24/2026 05:30 PM EDT President Donald Trump is building back his wall of tariffs around the U.S. economy — only with a lot more cracks. Behind the tough talk and double-digit tariff rates the White House rolled out Thursday are a long list of exemptions for popular consumer and industrial goods, foreign countries’ pet exports and niche products that can only be sourced from a handful of places in the world. See: live primates from Cambodia or Ecuador. The carve-outs are more expansive than previous rounds of tariffs from this administration, a sign that, even as Trump officials seek ways to wield the president’s favorite economic policy tool, they are also wary of deepening American consumers’ anger or risking foreign retaliation. “Being able to satisfy the president and work with the trading partners on a long-term basis and do something that makes sense for the economic actors involved … it has to be a balancing act,” said a former U.S. trade official, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Even countries that take more strident positions than we do follow this same practice of carving out things that make economic sense while maintaining the big, bold headline.” According to the fine print in a Federal Register document uploaded late Thursday, the new tariffs that went into effect Friday on 60 trading partners maintain exemptions the White House had included in the now-defunct global duties that the Supreme Court struck down in February, such as imports from Canada and Mexico that are compliant with an existing North American trade agreement. They also keep the carve-outs for food and agricultural products like coffee and cocoa beans that the administration added last fall, acknowledging those goods simply cannot be produced at scale in the U.S. But Trump’s latest tariffs, which are premised on the claim that foreign countries are not doing enough to eliminate forced labor from their supply chains, added even more exempted products to the list, from cork, to planting seeds, to semiconductor testing and inspection equipment. In all, more than 470 new products were exempted, spanning food items, farming inputs, raw metals and industrial materials, used clothing, and art and antiques. Thursday’s tariff announcement was the first step in a series of expected duties the administration plans to impose as it works to rebuild its protectionist trade policy — and it hopes will remain in place for the long haul. In addition to the forced labor investigation, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has launched several other probes that, when completed in the coming months, could justify additional duties on more than 16 trading partners, and it is looking at imposing tariffs on a range of industries that are important to national security, from robotics to wind turbines to pharmaceuticals. But any new round of tariffs will have to balance the administration’s trade priorities with an uncertain economy. Gas prices have continued to rise amid the Iran war, ratcheting up voters’ sensitivity to price hikes ahead of midterm elections that could undercut Trump’s power in Washington. The U.S. and China are engaged in a fragile trade detente, that could be upended by U.S. trade action in key industrial or tech sectors, relaunching a trade war that briefly sent tariffs between the world’s two largest economies soaring into triple digits. Jacob Jensen, director of trade policy at the center-right think tank the American Action Forum, said all the carve-outs in Trump’s latest round of tariffs are broadly a response to “an affordability concern.” “They’ve definitely become more refined in how they’re releasing these exemptions,” Jensen said. ”They’ve been fine-tuning over time compared to where we’ve started.” Sensing an opening, business groups are intensifying their efforts to lower tariffs on their goods, with one person close to the White House, granted anonymity to speak candidly, saying “the K Street crowd has been in overdrive to protect stuff.” In their briefing announcing the new duties Thursday, a senior administration official said that businesses requested tariff exemptions for more than 10,000 products during the public review process in the forced labor trade investigation. But even as the carve-outs help soften potential price hikes for consumers, Trump allies remain concerned that voters won’t see the nuance and give the administration credit. Kush Desai, a spokesman for the White House, said in an email that Trump’s tariff policies are “reversing decades of unfair trade, encouraging investment in U.S. production, strengthening critical supply chains, and giving American businesses a fair opportunity to compete. “While some ‘experts’ continue to defend the failed status quo, the President is focused on delivering lasting economic security for American workers and their families who vehemently support him,” Desai said. Businesses expressed relief Friday that the White House heeded at least heeded many of their requests. “We made pretty substantial comments on asking for more exceptions from the tariffs, and it looks like we did pretty well there,” said Ed Brzytwa, vice president of international trade at the Consumer Technology Association, which represents the likes of Apple, Google and Meta. “They added a lot of technology products to the list of exceptions relative to the proposed tariffs back in the beginning of June, but not everything that we asked for.” The administration has insisted that the tariffs have not had a significant impact on inflation, pointing to the fact that many businesses have swallowed the higher costs. But exemptions have also contributed to the fact that Trump’s trade policy hasn’t hit consumers in the way many economists had predicted. An analysis from the American Action Forum in April found that goods representing 37.5 percent of U.S. import value were exempt from Trump’s initial tariff salvo, before it was struck down in February. When including duty-free USMCA-compliant goods from Canada and Mexico, the share of import value exempt from the IEEPA tariffs reached more than half, according to a POLITICO analysis. The efforts to carve out certain products has gotten under the skin of some domestic industries, which say that exemptions undermine the administration’s efforts to boost U.S. production. The National Council of Textile Organizations, which represents U.S. textile makers, criticized the textile mechanism — a carve-out that lets Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia and Malaysia ship apparel into the U.S. at reduced Section 301 rates in exchange for buying American cotton — arguing it rewards Asian producers and undercuts domestic mills. “No other industry has been more disadvantaged by forced labor than the U.S. textile industry, which employs 453,000 workers and has lost 41 plants over the past two plus years,” said NCTO President and CEO Kim Glas in a statement. “We remain strongly concerned that USTR’s textile mechanism will harm the very domestic manufacturers the administration seeks to help.” On Thursday, a senior administration official, granted anonymity per the terms of the call, said the most recent batch of tariffs was “less complex” than what is to come, noting that the next wave of actions will have to address economic practices that require a lot of research and investigation. But the official was insistent that the administration won’t be deterred from using tariffs to achieve its aims of protecting domestic industry and forcing other countries to open their own markets. “We have literally dozens of investigations open, whether they’re Section 301 or Section 232,” the official said. “We’re using tariffs broadly to address unfair trading unfair trading practices overall. The president is not going to allow his trade policy and overall objectives to be undermined simply because one tool may be limited by a court or something else.” Megan Messerly contributed to this report.