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The many ways tarrifs will hit electronics

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11–20 of 184 posts

Re: The many ways tarrifs will hit electronics

#11

Yeah, my electronics hobbies are probably severely curtailed. I am assuming that the cancelling the de minimus exception is the real killer. I assume I can no longer afford PCBWay, AliExpress. Recent purchases I am not likely to be able to afford: NVIDIA TESLA M40 cards from China I found on eBay and a "mining rig" mother board from AliExpress. (Was putting together a, formerly, inexpensive local-Llama rig.) To be su…

Super bummed out about the glasses thing, too. So nice to have glasses that were cheap enough it wasn't that big a deal when a pair got destroyed for some reason, but also didn't look like shit.

Re: The many ways tarrifs will hit electronics

#12
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that for European buyers?

This touches on something I'm curious to see play out: How much shopping tourism will we see? If a laptop costs twice as much due to tariffs (as indicated by the forecast in the article) how many US consumers will wait with buying a new laptop or phone till they happen to be in another country? I'm also curious if we'll see a huge spike in smuggling which might give more justification for more spending on border secu…

Obviously yes this will happen. Trade restrictions always results in more smuggling and black market activity.

Re: The many ways tarrifs will hit electronics

#13
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that for European buyers?

This touches on something I'm curious to see play out: How much shopping tourism will we see? If a laptop costs twice as much due to tariffs (as indicated by the forecast in the article) how many US consumers will wait with buying a new laptop or phone till they happen to be in another country? I'm also curious if we'll see a huge spike in smuggling which might give more justification for more spending on border secu…

I'm interested to see how this affects Microsoft's messaging to some win10 users for "you need to buy a new PC to continue to be updated" while there's still a significant [0] amount of people to switch in 5-6 months.

[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk...

Re: The many ways tarrifs will hit electronics

#14
I wonder if this will heat up the used market. In Oct Windows 10 will go EOL unless you start paying M/S. For windows 11 many people will need new hardware.

I wonder if M/S will pull back on their requirements. Of course people could move to Linux :)

Re: The many ways tarrifs will hit electronics

#15
I've honestly never understood the point of the tariffs.

1. They're massively unpopular and likely to cause electoral losses in '26 and '28 which will immediately undo them

2. Consumers know the tariffs will likely cause a recession, and will likely be undone in 4y. Pretty much every major spending purchase that can be delayed, will.

3. Companies know 4y is not enough time to invest in new supply chains or new manufacturing plants. Given sinking demand they will shed jobs and hunker down for the duration.

I can tell you, for myself? Any major purchases are now off the table. I will happily keep my 18 year old car running instead of buying a new honda civic. I'm perfectly content with the devices I currently have. I will root and install a third party rom instead of buying a new phone. My 3090 will happily play old / AA games for the duration. Travel will likely be reduced thanks to the weak dollar and anti us sentiment in general.

Re: The many ways tarrifs will hit electronics

#17
> The estimates become highly dependent on how influential China is for final assembly.

The article mentions this but then doesn’t go much further into it. But this will likely be the biggest factor with tariffs.

China will still produce the electronics and many other goods, but then the goods will be shipped to another country for “substantial modifications” before being shipped to the US to evade the US tariffs on China

Re: The many ways tarrifs will hit electronics

#18
post #3

I was trying to buy a laptop yesterday and the ones reviewed three months ago as "best laptop under $1000" are all $1500

How is that for European buyers?

I mean VAT here is significantly higher than the equivalent sales taxes in the US, so stuff is almost always more expensive.

Re: The many ways tarrifs will hit electronics

#19

I've honestly never understood the point of the tariffs. 1. They're massively unpopular and likely to cause electoral losses in '26 and '28 which will immediately undo them 2. Consumers know the tariffs will likely cause a recession, and will likely be undone in 4y. Pretty much every major spending purchase that can be delayed, will. 3. Companies know 4y is not enough time to invest in new supply chains or new manufa…

Trump wants to get rid of income taxes for those earning under $150k.

He most likely intends to pull out the financial pillar of income tax, and replace it with tariffs. He is likely waiting for the price crunch to blow up so he can step in an give everyone the "gift" of no income tax.

Re: The many ways tarrifs will hit electronics

#20

Let's just call it what it is - a national sales tax. The only way significant bottom-up manufacturing ecosystems would come back to the US would be through targeted government investment, long term stability, and effective anti-trust enforcement - all things beyond the current administration. If three decades of economic neoliberalism was a steamroller crushing our industrial base, the Trumpist solution is to just t…

Tariffs are also fertile ground for corruption.
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