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I wonder if this also applies to Mouser. I've been buying pretty much all of my components from there, but if it becomes much more expensive I might have to just source from China and learn to read their datasheets. Mouser has much better customer experience and Texas Instruments, Analog Devices etc. have much better chips and docs, but at some point the 10x less expensive Chinese clones (and these days even new Chinese made chips) will just become the rational choice.

(With the assumption that this will be just the start of a trade war around chips)

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> I wonder if this also applies to Mouser.

Yes.

> I might have to just source from China

It also applies to anything you source from China yourself. It's an import tax. Any applicable goods or services introduced to the US market incur it.

The one place it doesn't apply is when Digi-Key (or Mouser) ship to outside the US, their warehouses are apparently transit areas. (Source: I ordered to Switzerland a few days ago. No tariffs. You can probably check yourself by creating an order.)

If you're buying from China, you'll be paying the Trump Sales Tax. And if you try to ship directly from China yourself, you'll pay administrative fees to whoever handles the actual tax payment for you. For a few moments in early February before the administration began backtracking, DHL was charging a $32 fee for each shipment, even for a $1 trinket, and the other shippers (Cainao etc) were rapidly gearing up to do the same. The de minimis exemption for low-value goods was also briefly suspended, which is why the fees were so out of whack, and also why USPS momentarily stopped accepting shipments from China and Hong Kong: they didn't have the infrastructure to suddenly deal with fees on huge volumes of packages.

Buying your Chinese stuff through Mouser or Digikey or Arrow will spread that administrative fee across a whole shipping container of components. You'll still be paying the tax, but the administrative costs will be amortized.

I think tariff targets Chinese goods in general. Maybe you can source from ShenZhen in person but I'm not sure how the Custom office deals with this. I guess it's OK as long as you don't bring in quantity.

Another solution is to just live in ShenZhen when it's applicable. The city is nice and vibrant, and you are treated pretty well as long as you don't get into politics.

> Another solution is to just live in ShenZhen when it's applicable. The city is nice and vibrant, and you are treated pretty well as long as you don't get into politics.

That's an extremely subtle way of saying "keep your mouth shut".

It's not. You can freely talk about other topics. In fact, talking politics is probably safe as long as you are not too loud. I think it is the same for all countries I have lived in. Talking about politics is always taboo.

"Talking politics is probably safe as long as you are not too loud."

and

"Talking about politics is always taboo."

Hahahaha. That's not the airtight argument against "a subtle way of saying keep your mouth shut" that you apparently think it is.

>Talking about politics is always taboo.

Not around where I am, at least withing the various circles I talk to. It can be hard to avoid, even. (to be fair, I live in a city which is relatively an outlier on the political spectrum compared to the country as a whole)

> Maybe you can source from ShenZhen in person but I'm not sure how the Custom office deals with this. I guess it's OK as long as you don't bring in quantity.

Historically this was true, because the de minimis exemption meant small value imports didn't get charged tariffs. But the recent tariff EO both increased existing tariffs AND removed de minimis, meaning even a $5 import now needs to go through the overhead of tariff calculation and payment.

The de minimis change is temporarily paused because there's no way carriers or enforcement could actually handle the change in tariff volume with no warning, but broadly speaking, the low value direct import route is going away.

There are also tariffs being applied to goods from China, so "just source from China" may not allow you to avoid the tariffs.

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