Tit for Tariff

Hi ZipLawyer! Today’s Memo:

🇺🇸 Trump's reciprocal tariffs
📱 TikTok is back?
💻 Arm enters Chip Game
📈 Linklaters, Kirkland head IPO
💎 Fieldfisher, Farrer lead on diamond case
🙋 What is an IPO?

Tit for Tariff

Donald Trump is taking his trade war playbook to the next level, ordering reciprocal tariffs on trading partners he thinks are playing dirty with U.S. goods. His logic? “If you tax us, we tax you right back.”

What's going on?

Trump's plan tasks U.S. Trade and Commerce officials with cooking up custom tariffs for each country—a process that could take months and a whole lot of spreadsheets. While Trump calls it fairness, critics see a diplomatic headache waiting to happen, with fears of inflation, trade wars, and logistical nightmares (because tracking 200 countries' tariffs, subsidies, and taxes sounds like a dream job, right?).

Big names like India, Japan, and the EU are in the crosshairs, but whether this is a serious policy shift or another Trump-style negotiation tactic remains to be seen. Either way, global trade just got a lot more interesting—and potentially expensive.

TikTok is back

Like a reality show contestant surviving elimination, TikTok has made its way back to Apple and Google’s U.S. app stores, but the drama isn’t over. After being booted last month under a 2024 law forcing ByteDance to sell its U.S. operations or face a ban, Attorney General Pam Bondi reassured tech giants that enforcement isn’t happening just yet. Trump, once all-in on the ban, has now hit the pause button for 75 days—giving TikTok a temporary reprieve. But if no sale happens by early April, the app could be on the chopping block again.

Arm Enters the Chip Game

In a plot twist for the $700 billion semiconductor industry, Arm is ditching its licensing-only model and stepping into chip manufacturing—a move that could ruffle feathers at Nvidia, Qualcomm, and other longtime clients. The SoftBank-owned firm plans to roll out its first in-house processor this summer, with Meta already on board as an early customer. Designed for data centre servers, the chip fits neatly into SoftBank’s AI ambitions, including its $500 billion Stargate project with OpenAI and Abu Dhabi’s MGX. With this shift, Arm isn’t just supplying the industry—it’s competing in it.

Linklaters, Kirkland head IPO