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Small U.S. town, big company. Can it weather the tariff Blizzard? (Digi-Key) (2025)

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Re: Small U.S. town, big company. Can it weather the tariff Blizzard? (Digi-Key) (2025)

#31

Post by markus_zhang »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #27
markus_zhang wrote: post #7

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.

You can buy US manufactured oscilloscopes from keysight. A 50% price hike on one of them is enough money to buy a new car, with enough left over for a few months of bay area rent. There are much better uses for that money than throwing it into the money furnace of tariffs, like paying employees or buying half a dozen lower-end scopes manufactured in Asia.

If customers can afford a 50% price hike on lower end oscilloscopes, would that create a small domestic market? Like, I don’t really mind spending an extra 200 bucks on a 200 buck oscilloscope, or even an extra 300 bucks.

Re: Small U.S. town, big company. Can it weather the tariff Blizzard? (Digi-Key) (2025)

#32

Post by mindslight »

markus_zhang wrote: post #31
AlotOfReading wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy US manufactured oscilloscopes from keysight. A 50% price hike on one of them is enough money to buy a new car, with enough left over for a few months of bay area rent. There are much better uses for that money than throwing it into the money furnace of tariffs, like paying employees or buying half a dozen lower-end scopes manufactured in Asia.

If customers can afford a 50% price hike on lower end oscilloscopes, would that create a small domestic market? Like, I don’t really mind spending an extra 200 bucks on a 200 buck oscilloscope, or even an extra 300 bucks.

The comment you're responding to was literally pointing at the actual magnitude of prices for scopes that are merely US-branded. And for the lower end models you're talking about, they're not even anywhere near "Made in the US from US components". Siglent or Rigol are not going to be setting up manufacturing in the US to avoid tariff rates on finished products, and they certainly aren't going to do it when the inputs would be subject to tariffs as well.

Your comments in this thread basically come across like you just read an economics 101 textbook and are now asking leading questions to continue your study. In reality, markets are computationally hard and path/structure dependent. Merely tweaking a few knobs to increase some incentive won't make something magically spring into existence. A lot of market "proponents" ironically miss this - if markets were not computationally hard, then centralized planning would also work!

Re: Small U.S. town, big company. Can it weather the tariff Blizzard? (Digi-Key) (2025)

#33

Post by phil21 »

markus_zhang wrote: post #19
analognoise wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah OK, so when do we see production coming back to North America? On the other hand, didn't TMSC and other manufacturers plan to open a few spots in the US?

You don’t. Not with current lifestyles and general way of life people alive today would recognize at least.

I lived through Walmart systemically walking through the Midwest and destroying every bit of competition in its path. People looooooved to talk about how other people should “just pay $5 more!” to a local retailer and stuff made in the USA. But it was always for other people to do. Never underestimate the American consumers cheapness. If they can get more junk for less, they will do so nearly every time.

And this was in an era when there was still a large amount of manufacturing done in the US. The costs would no longer just be a minor 20% discount - they would be multiples since we lost both the capital investment in equipment and factories, the supply chains feeding them, and would have to spend a generation training up current high schoolers into skilled and semi-skilled manufacturing labor. Assuming anyone actually is willing to do those jobs these days.

Buying local became something for performative rich folks to do. Everyone else excused themselves due to “need” of some sort. Consumer preference was revealed and catered to - and now without severe great depression level pain it’s not coming back.

Re: Small U.S. town, big company. Can it weather the tariff Blizzard? (Digi-Key) (2025)

#34

Post by IshKebab »

markus_zhang wrote: post #20
ahahs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can't Digikey simply charge a say 25% premium? Would that push them out of the market, considering demand is still high.

If Digikey consistently charged 10% more than Mouser, yeah that would absolutely ruin them. Digikey and Mouser don't have much to distinguish them already. It's like Aldi vs Lidl.

Re: Small U.S. town, big company. Can it weather the tariff Blizzard? (Digi-Key) (2025)

#35

Post by downrightmike »

Xylakant wrote: post #13
throwup238 wrote: post #10

Should note that this article is from April 2025. Digikey sruvives and the tariffs are supposed to be refunded.

Even if tariffs are refunded at some point, the cost of implementing and managing the tariffs, list sales, lost opportunities and so on are not. Nor is the cost of recovering the tariffs from the government.

Credit card and banks should be able to manage the transactions, they keep records for years. If they were smart, they'd be pushing to get the deal and a massive fee

Re: Small U.S. town, big company. Can it weather the tariff Blizzard? (Digi-Key) (2025)

#36

Post by joezydeco »

nine-one-two wrote: post #23
0_____0 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we lost Digikey, Mouser, and AVNET, it would be catastrophic. Entire US engineering divisions would leave for Shenzhen.

What about farnell and arrow?

Be careful with Arrow. They like to ask what you're working on and if they discover an opportunity to bid on the same work they'll undercut you.

Re: Small U.S. town, big company. Can it weather the tariff Blizzard? (Digi-Key) (2025)

#37

Post by Xylakant »

downrightmike wrote: post #35
Xylakant wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if tariffs are refunded at some point, the cost of implementing and managing the tariffs, list sales, lost opportunities and so on are not. Nor is the cost of recovering the tariffs from the government.

Credit card and banks should be able to manage the transactions, they keep records for years. If they were smart, they'd be pushing to get the deal and a massive fee

Neither bank nor credit card companies can possibly manage the tariff question for any party. Tariffs get charged on the goods that you import and depend on what specifically you import. Banks manage the financial transaction, but have no specific knowledge what goods you're paying for and at what rate they are subject to tariffs or taxes.

Re: Small U.S. town, big company. Can it weather the tariff Blizzard? (Digi-Key) (2025)

#38

Post by HPMOR »

hedora wrote: post #17
AlotOfReading wrote: post #6

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.

Anecdotes are not data, so here's some data: 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.

Anecdotes __are__ data. How much weight you ascribe to it as being representative is different. But you cannot disqualify it as 'not data'. It is usually a leading indicator of what could potentially show up in these more robust datasets.

Re: Small U.S. town, big company. Can it weather the tariff Blizzard? (Digi-Key) (2025)

#39

Post by elevation »

joezydeco wrote: post #36
nine-one-two wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about farnell and arrow?

Be careful with Arrow. They like to ask what you're working on and if they discover an opportunity to bid on the same work they'll undercut you.

How would Arrow undercut you?

An R&D firm I know is constantly spinning low volume prototype designs with wildly different BOMs; they treat Arrow reps like North Korean spies.

But another crank-turning design firm I know trusts Arrow to do BOM reviews because of how many times they’ve come through with a reel of hard-to-find parts, making a design manufacturable in a pinch, unlocking sales.

The exact same Arrow rep serves both firms, I’ve never figured out why he is treated so differently.

Re: Small U.S. town, big company. Can it weather the tariff Blizzard? (Digi-Key) (2025)

#40

Post by PearlRiver »

hedora wrote: post #17
AlotOfReading wrote: post #6

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.

Anecdotes are not data, so here's some data: 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.

Meanwhile China has a 1200 billion trade surplus. They are flooding the world with cheap Chinese shit despite the bloviating orange.
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