WASHINGTON (TNND) — At the White House, a new week is coming with a new round of tariffs.

Pharmaceuticals and semiconductors will soon be subject to a special category of tariffs under a decades-old trade law for products deemed by the president to be critical to national security. President Donald Trump said he would release the details of these new tariffs as soon as this week.

“The example I like to use is, if you have a cannon but you’re getting cannon balls from an adversary, then if there were to be some kind of action, then you might run out of cannon balls, might not be a good thing," said National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett.

Hassett and his White House colleagues had to clarify that semiconductors and other tech products like smartphones were not permanently exempt from the president's trade war after a U.S. Customs and Border Protection memo released Friday night listed them as excluded from the president's global reciprocal tariffs. In reality, semiconductors and like products will be moved to a different "bucket" of tariffs.

“What we’re talking about is coverage. And so what’s gonna be covered, and pretty much everything’s going to be covered. The question is, which law applies?” Hassett said Monday morning.

A few hours later, while taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office, Trump was asked if there would be any short-lived product exemptions for Apple products and other smartphones.

“I’m a very flexible person. I don’t change my mind but I’m flexible and you have to be. You can’t just have a wall and you’ll only go, no, sometimes you have to go around it, under it, or above it. There’ll be maybe things coming up. I speak to Tim Cook. I helped Tim Cook recently and that whole business. I’m not, I don’t want to hurt anybody," Trump said.

However, Trump has acknowledged there will be "a transition cost and transition problems."

Many small businesses have been scrambling to find alternative suppliers overseas. Others are paralyzed by uncertainty.

Democrats in Congress, with the help of a few Republicans, are working to garner enough support to revoke Trump's emergency authority that has allowed him to unilaterally impose sweeping tariffs. As things stand, it's highly unlikely enough members of the Republican majorities in the House and Senate would buck the president to give the measure a veto-proof majority.

Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said he's concerned about the flexibility Trump has shown for certain companies and industry leaders.

"If you’re connected and you’ve got his number, you’ve got (Treasury Secretary Scott) Bessent’s number, you may get a break like Tim Cook makes a call, no problem. But if you’re a small manufacturer like we have one here in Vermont that imports about $1 million worth of parts from China, they’re gonna go out of business with these tariffs," Welch said.

In a new CBS News/YouGov poll taken last week, 58% of Americans disapprove of Trump's new tariffs; 75% believe they will increase prices in the short term and 48% believe they will increase prices in the long term.