Trump said on December 13 that the U.S. has reached “phase one” trade deal with China including the pause of the additional tariffs on Chinese products which was scheduled to come to effect on December 15, 2019. Several LED lighting products on the list are thus free from extra tariffs for now.

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With the new agreement, the U.S. said it would delay or cancel the new tariffs on the US$160 Chinese goods and reduce the tariffs from 15% to 7.5% for the products imposed with extra tariffs in September. However, according to the United States Trade Representative (USTR), the 25 percent tariffs on approximately $250 billion of Chinese imports announced previously will remain active.
Since the trade war between the U.S. and China began in 2018, the LED industry has been impacted by the up and down relationship of the two counties as a wide range of LED products were continuously included in the tariff lists.
The new deal announced last week might be a temporary release for LED lighting companies as currently no more tariffs will be added on LED lighting products including lamps as well as flashlights and electrical filaments filament Christmas-tree lamps. The China Association of Lighting Industry has estimated that these lighting items accounted for 18.2% of China’s lighting exports to the US in 2018. Among which, the export amount of “LED lamps” was US$1.768 billion in 2018.