11–20 of 43 posts
When I order from Mouser (a Digi-key competitor based in Dallas) they plainly charge a 10-15% tariff fee. I'm struggling to understand why this solution isn't obvious. You have to pass the cost onto the consumer, or your margins dwindle. It's trivial math. > People are also having to intervene in once-automated tasks. Thousands of orders that used to auto-flow directly to the warehouse floor for same-day shipping now…
When I order from Mouser (a Digi-key competitor based in Dallas) they plainly charge a 10-15% tariff fee. I'm struggling to understand why this solution isn't obvious. You have to pass the cost onto the consumer, or your margins dwindle. It's trivial math. > People are also having to intervene in once-automated tasks. Thousands of orders that used to auto-flow directly to the warehouse floor for same-day shipping now…
Just once I managed to get to some kind of manager who told me point blank "we won't sell this part to startups."
Should note that this article is from April 2025. Digikey sruvives and the tariffs are supposed to be refunded.
More subtle is that every dollar saved in buying components from China is more money for all of the forementioned.
When I order from Mouser (a Digi-key competitor based in Dallas) they plainly charge a 10-15% tariff fee. I'm struggling to understand why this solution isn't obvious. You have to pass the cost onto the consumer, or your margins dwindle. It's trivial math. > People are also having to intervene in once-automated tasks. Thousands of orders that used to auto-flow directly to the warehouse floor for same-day shipping now…
I've only seen a small portion of the chaos from my side of the market, but that's been chaotic enough. All of this chaos has actually slowed down our US manufacturing buildout. We'd like to build US factories, but we're having to slow them because of the uncertainty. A foreign factory only has the uncertainty on the US import/export, while a US factory has uncertainty on all imports/exports.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/C307RC1Q027SBEA
US Factory build out investment increased from $80B/year to $240B/year under Biden.
Trump's economic policy has managed to undo $30B of that so far, and the trend is accelerating.
When I order from Mouser (a Digi-key competitor based in Dallas) they plainly charge a 10-15% tariff fee. I'm struggling to understand why this solution isn't obvious. You have to pass the cost onto the consumer, or your margins dwindle. It's trivial math. > People are also having to intervene in once-automated tasks. Thousands of orders that used to auto-flow directly to the warehouse floor for same-day shipping now…
Mouser has become unreliable. Most of the analog parts we've ordered get cancelled and customer service has no clue why. Just once I managed to get to some kind of manager who told me point blank "we won't sell this part to startups."
We created a service that blocks people from buying various parts using a ton of different complex business rules (one simple rule we had was we straight up didn't sell ANYTHING to the middle east for a while).
Startups were another business we didn't sell to simply because of the sheer amount of fake companies we got trying to work around our rules engine.
Alot of the rules for our service was mandated from the FBI. That was a fun call to reveive from them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah that’s what I thought too. I think people are find with some 50-100% hike of prices on ham radios, oscilloscopes, and even phones, if local production starts to appear.
What lol no they’re not. None of those benefits of a price hike go to American workers. They get low wage factory jobs, not old school pension jobs, and all their stuff goes up in price? Laughable. I doubt Americans won’t even pay 5% more to get stuff made in the USA.
When I order from Mouser (a Digi-key competitor based in Dallas) they plainly charge a 10-15% tariff fee. I'm struggling to understand why this solution isn't obvious. You have to pass the cost onto the consumer, or your margins dwindle. It's trivial math. > People are also having to intervene in once-automated tasks. Thousands of orders that used to auto-flow directly to the warehouse floor for same-day shipping now…
I worked at Mouser as an engineer for a few years. This included work on the service that charges this blanket tariff rate, which includes incredibly complex business logic that ended up taking half the year to make. and that was with upper management pushing us very hard to get it done. Digi key from what i understood is a smaller company that lacks the ability the capacity to get something like this done as fast. o…