He's waiting...Xi's not calling. Yippy Americans get snippy

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The TOI correspondent from Washington: The United States is exempting a wide array of electronics including computers, smartphones, hard drives, semiconductors, chip-making equipment from President Trump’s so-called “reciprocal tariffs” in a climbdown aimed at assuaging America consumer fears of price hikes and support US tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Dell and others.

The US Customs and Border Protection published the exclusions on Friday night amid growing domestic skepticism about Trump’s tariff gambit that has failed to bring China to its knees, and instead elicited a defiant response from Beijing.

China accounts for more than 70% of global output of consumer electronics according to some industry estimates, and the US concession, albeit meant to safeguard national security and protect its domestic constituency, is also seen as retreat in Washington’s tariff standoff with Beijing.

The Trump White House is putting on a brave face amid intense domestic pressure to show results from the President’s tariff threat that has roiled global trade. Broad signals to China to initiate talks by way of a phone call from President Xi has been rebuffed by Beijing which feels insulted by some of the language coming from Washington, including vice-president JD Vance saying US is having to buy stuff made by Chinese “peasants.”

Trump’s tariff throwdown is now being trashed by a broad swathe of US experts with little support for him outside the MAGA echo-chamber, where defense of the President’s gambit rests on hope and trust. “Trust in President Trump. He knows what he’s doing. This is a proven economic formula,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at the daily briefing on Friday amid growing doubts about the outcome.

Trump is now being taunted by critics after China made it clear it would not initiate any calls despite the invitation from Washington. “I have a lot of respect for President Xi. In a true sense, he’s been a friend of mine for a long period of time. And I think that we’ll end up working out something that’s very good for both countries. I look forward to it,” the US President said on Friday, but it elicited no reaction from Beijing other than Chinese surrogates asking US to go take a hike.

In a widely distributed clip from an interview, Victor Gao, a Chinese academic close to the Beijing establishment, when asked about China losing access to US market with its intransigent stand, said, “We don’t care. China has been here for 5,000 years, most of the time there was no US and we survived. If the US wants to bully China, we will deal with the situation without the US. And we expect to survive another 5,000 years.”

As it turned out, US has had to retreat from tariffing a range of electronic items that China directly or indirectly feeds into the US to keep Americans hooked and happy. There are reports that Americans are buying Christmas gifts even before Easter Sunday (April 20) fearing higher prices for goodies and supply disruption from China, whose “cheap products” consumers feast on.

US tech companies have gradually shifted some of the manufacturing to India and Vietnam in recent years, but China remains the source of most components.

Trump aides have asserted that several countries including India, Vietnam, Japan, and South Korea among some 70+ nations are ready for a tariff-free bilateral deals, but have little to show for the claims so far by way of concrete agreements. Statements from New Delhi by India’s commerce minister and foreign minister that India “will not negotiate at gunpoint” indicate residual differences in virtual talks between the two sides.

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