NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tariff exemptions announced Friday on electronics like smartphones and laptops are only a temporary reprieve until the Trump administration develops a new tariff approach specific to the semiconductor industry, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday.

“They’re exempt from the reciprocal tariffs but they’re included in the semiconductor tariffs, which are coming in probably a month or two,” Lutnick told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

The Trump administration late Friday said it would exclude electronics from reciprocal tariffs, a move that could help keep the prices down for popular consumer devices that aren’t usually made in the U.S.

The move was expected to benefit big tech companies like Apple and Samsung and chip makers like Nvidia, though the uncertainty of future tariffs may rein in an expected tech stock rally on Monday.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said items like smartphones, laptops, hard drives, flat-panel monitors and some chips would qualify for the exemption. Machines used to make semiconductors are excluded too. That means they won’t be subject to the current 145% tariffs levied on China or the 10% baseline tariffs elsewhere.

It’s the latest tariff change by the Trump administration, which has made several U-turns in its massive plan to put tariffs in place on goods from most countries. Lutnick’s comments Sunday made clear that more changes were on the way, including a policy specific to the computer chip industry.

On Air Force One Saturday night, President Donald Trump told reporters he would get into more specifics on exemptions on Monday. “We’ve been making a lot of money,” he said. “It’s been the other way around. Other countries, in particular China was making a lot of money.”

The exemption filed Friday night seemed to reflect the president’s realization that his China tariffs are unlikely to shift more manufacturing of smartphones, computers and other gadgets to the U.S. any time soon, if ever, despite the administration’s predictions that the trade war prod Apple to make iPhones in the U.S. for the first time.

But that was an unlikely scenario after Apple spent decades building up a finely calibrated supply chain in China. What’s more, it would take several years and cost billions of dollars to build new plants in the U.S., and then confront Apple with economic forces that could triple the price of an iPhone, threatening to torpedo sales of its marquee product.

Trump’s decision to exempt the iPhone and other popular electronics made in China mirrors the similar relief that he gave those products during the trade war of his first term in the White House. But Trump began his second term seemingly determined to impose the tariffs more broadly.

The turmoil battered the stocks of tech’s “Magnificent Seven” — Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla, Google parent Alphabet and Facebook parent Meta Platforms.

At one point, the Magnificent Seven’s combined market value had plunged by $2.1 trillion, or 14%, from April 2 when Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs on a wide range of countries. When Trump paused the tariffs outside of China on Wednesday, the lost value in those companies was pared to $644 billion, or a 4% decline.

The electronics exemption is the kind of friendly treatment that industry was envisioning when Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos assembled behind the president during his Jan. 20 inauguration.

That united display of fealty reflected Big Tech’s hopes that Trump would be more accommodating than President Joe Biden’s administration.

Apple won praise from Trump in late February when the Cupertino, California, company committed to invest $500 billion and add 20,000 jobs in the U.S. during the next four years. The pledge was an echo of a $350 billion investment commitment in the U.S. that Apple made during Trump’s first term when the iPhone was exempted from China tariffs.

The move removes “a huge black cloud overhang for now over the tech sector and the pressure facing U.S. Big Tech,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives in a research note. Ives amended that note after Lutnick’s comments Sunday, saying the confusing news out of the White House “is dizzying for the industry and investors and creating massive uncertainty and chaos for companies trying to plan their supply chain, inventory, and demand.”

In a statement issued Saturday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt did not address the exemptions specifically but indicated the administration still plans to push for tech companies to move manufacturing to the U.S.

She said the administration has secured U.S. investments from tech companies — including Apple, TSMC and Nvidia — who are “hustling to onshore their manufacturing in the United States as soon as possible.”

Neither Apple nor Samsung responded to a request for comment over the weekend. Nvidia declined to comment.

NEW YORK (AP) — The upheaval in stocks has been grabbing all the headlines, but there is a bigger problem looming in another corner of the financial markets that rarely gets headlines: Investors are dumping U.S. government bonds.

Normally, investors rush into Treasurys at a whiff of economic chaos but now they are selling them as not even the lure of higher interest payments on the bonds is getting them to buy. The freak development has experts worried that big banks, funds and traders are losing faith in America as a good place to store their money.

“The fear is the U.S. is losing its standing as the safe haven,” said George Cipolloni, a fund manager at Penn Mutual Asset Management. “Our bond market is the biggest and most stable in the world, but when you add instability, bad things can happen.”

That could be bad news for consumers in need of a loan — and for President Donald Trump, who had hoped his tariff pause earlier this week would restore confidence in the markets.

What’s happening?

A week ago, the yield on the 10-year Treasury was 4.01%. On Friday, the yield shot as high as 4.58% before sliding back to around 4.50%. That’s a major swing for the bond market, which measures moves by the hundredths of a percentage point.

Among the possible knockoff effects is a big hit to ordinary Americans in the form of higher interest rates on mortgages and car financing and other loans.

“As yields move higher, you’ll see your borrowing rates move higher, too,” said Brian Rehling, head of fixed income strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. “And every corporation uses these funding markets. If they get more expensive, they’re going to have to pass along those costs customers or cut costs by cutting jobs.”

To be sure, no one can say exactly what mix of factors is behind the developing bond bust or how long it will last, but it’s rattling Wall Street nonetheless.

Bonds are supposed to move in the opposite direction as stocks, rising when stocks are falling. In this way, they act like shock absorbers to 401(k)s and other portfolios in stock market meltdowns, compensating somewhat for the losses.

“This is Econ 101,” said Jack McIntyre, portfolio manager for Brandywine Global, adding about the bond sell-off now, “It’s left people scratching their heads.”

The latest trigger for bond yields to go up was Friday’s worse-than-expected reading on sentiment among U.S. consumers, including expectations for much higher inflation ahead. But the unusual bond yield spike this week also reflects deeper worries as Trump’s tariffs threats have made America seem hostile and unstable even to longtime allies.

The influence of the bond market

Trump acknowledged that the bond market played a role in his decision Wednesday to put a 90-day pause on many tariffs, saying investors “were getting a little queasy.”

If indeed it was the bond market, and not stocks, that made him change course, it wouldn’t come as a surprise.

The bond market’s reaction to her tax and budget policy was behind the ouster of United Kingdom’s Liz Truss in 2022, whose 49 days made her Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister. James Carville, adviser to former U.S. President Bill Clinton, also famously said he’d like to be reincarnated as the bond market because of how much power it wields.

The instinctual rush into U.S. debt is so ingrained in investors it even happens when you’d least expect.

People poured money into U.S. Treasury bonds during 2009 Financial Crisis, for instance, even though U.S. was the source of the problem, specifically its housing market.

But to Wall Street pros it made sense: U.S. Treasurys are liquid, stable in price and you can buy and sell them with ease even during a panic, so of course businesses and traders would rush into them to wait out the storm.

Yields on U.S bonds quickly fell during that crisis, which had a benefit beyond cushioning personal financial portfolios. It also lowered borrowing costs, which helped businesses and consumers recover.

This time that natural corrective isn’t kicking in.

What’s causing the sell-off?

Aside from sudden jitters about the U.S., several other things could be triggering the bond sell-off.

Some experts speculate that China, a vast holder of U.S. government bonds, is dumping them in retaliation. But that seems unlikely since that would hurt the country, too. Selling Treasurys, or essentially exchanging U.S. dollars for Chinese yuan, would make China’s currency strengthen and its exports more expensive.

Another explanation is that a favored strategy of some hedge funds involving U.S. debt and lots of borrowing — called the basis trade — is going against them. That means their lenders are asking to get repaid and they need to raise cash.

“They are selling Treasurys and that is pushing up yields — that’s part of it,” said Mike Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Global Advisors. “But the other part is that U.S. has become a less reliable global partner.”

Wells Fargo’s Rehling said he’s worried about a hit to confidence in the U.S., too, but that it’s way too early to be sure and that the sell-off may stop soon, anyway.

“If Treasurys are no longer the place to park your cash, where do you go?,” he said. “Is there another bond out there that is more liquid? I don’t’ think so.”