What Trump’s Tariffs Mean for Tech—and You | EUROtoday

Katie Drummond: Very thrilling promise by Howard Lutnick. I can not wait to speak about whether or not any of that’s really attainable.

Michael Heat: Certainly not within the brief time period.

Lauren Goode: Was this the identical second the place he talked concerning the military of hundreds of thousands utilizing tiny screws?

Katie Drummond: Oh, sure. The teeny tiny screws? The teeny tiny screws? Yeah.

Lauren Goode: That was the one on CBS Face the Nation, I feel all of us noticed it.

Howard Lutnick [Archival audio]: The military of hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of human beings screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones. That form of factor goes to come back to America.

Michael Heat: So Elon was tweeting by way of it. Tim Cook has most likely additionally been sitting on Twitter and popping off some tweets calling numerous members of the White House advisory workers morons, proper?

Lauren Goode: Tim Cook has not mentioned something publicly.

Katie Drummond: Let’s give that man just a little credit score. He is approach too sensible to try this. Apple is as savvy as they arrive, I anticipate to listen to nothing from them about this. To Lauren’s level earlier, I imply, they’re actually working this behind the scenes, however I might anticipate they need this to be from a public optics perspective, no remark, clean crusing, et cetera.

Lauren Goode: Katie, you talked about on the time of the inauguration, once we noticed that picture of the tech CEOs who have been in attendance, I feel your comment was Tim Cook appears to be like like he needs to vomit?

Katie Drummond: He was not precisely beaming with enthusiasm like a few of his colleagues, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, et cetera. He appeared like somebody had died, and possibly it is his firm based mostly on what’s occurring proper now,

Michael Heat: Here’s hope for the longer term. Well, let’s speak about one of many different folks in that picture, Mr. Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO. Now, Amazon will not be a {hardware} firm like Apple, however it offers in laborious items. So what do the tariffs imply for Amazon and its enterprise?

Lauren Goode: Well, there’s additionally, we should always simply be aware, and our colleague, Zeyi Yang has been masking this at WIRED too, there’s one thing that is been referred to as the de minimis exemption for e-commerce firms delivery items from China, and a part of this new tariffs bundle really removes that exemption, which isn’t good for e-commerce firms.

Michael Heat: That’s in case your items value lower than $800?

Lauren Goode: I consider so, sure.

Michael Heat: You do not should pay the hefty import tax on it.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. Exactly.

Katie Drummond: This one is just a little bit much less clear-cut to me, and I’m pleased to argue about it or be instructed I’m flawed. This feels much less dire for Amazon than it’s for the Elons of the world and his firms and the Apples and the Tim Cooks. I imply the reliance that Amazon has on Chinese items bought on their platform, I feel it is at the least 50 p.c. It’s greater than 50 p.c of what Amazon sells. But given Lauren what you simply mentioned, that these different Chinese commerce giants are going to be hit actually laborious by these tariffs, in some respects that feels prefer it form of equalizes the taking part in area for Amazon. And then clearly Michael, to your level, they don’t seem to be a {hardware} firm. Obviously they seem to be a huge commerce firm, however they’ve additionally obtained Amazon Web Services, they produce other sides to their firm that really feel rather more insulated from the form of speedy impacts of tariffs. I imply, how does that sit with each of you?