I can’t tell you how depressing it is to go from having access to cheap learning materials for introducing kids (and adults) to electronics, and now it’s being taxed away in the name of improving the US competitiveness or something. Total footgun.
Putting together PCBs, reading and replicating schematics, designing my own hardware. It’s been really fun and has paid dividends for my career (firmware). If the US is interested in bringing knowledge of manufacturing back this is a very very bad way to do it. How many undergrad projects are now impossible because the BOM has quadrupled? How many future mechanical/electrical engineers are not going to get into hardware because of this?
It’s all going to be gone. I’ve spent roughly $1200 last year having PCBs and ordering sensors etc. that goes to $4000 with these executive orders.
It’s insanity, pure insanity.
You'll find that naïve shortsightedness often is indistinguishable from malicious foresight, when looked back upon. So remember how to stop it: think of the little things, the compounding effects. There's always costs and trades being made, there's no free lunch. As the world gets more advanced it gets more complex. The more complex it gets the more those little subtle things matter
Use VR / simuations to cut down on Milton Hershey[1] cost issues. Simulations can allow for 'timing the tarrifs'.
North American FPGA's may be a thing again! (once pi systems superceeds lambda systems as the multi-FPGA board connection theory of choice :-)
Save on robotic automation costs via software scripts!
Perhaps 3d printed circuit boards will now be a more realisitic alterntative than traditional outsourcing board production? [2][3][4]
Perhaps there'll be some motivation/inspiration for creating/combining standard programming logic/language/3d 'threaded' sock it programming by combining (2021) mathematics of knitting[5]; and more modern / inexpensive / upgraded 'general computational device' derived from apollo guidence computer[6] concept. aka instead of wasm, weave-em.
Do have to get over the 'stich in time, saves nine', since most modern computation 'saves in 8'. Easy to unravel program(s). Tight knit spreadsheets!
But, computational e-ink might scale better using DBOS concepts[7].
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[1] : https://hersheystory.org/milton-hershey-history/
[2] : https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1ajll6s/3d_prin...
[3] : direct desk top printed circuits on paper flexible electronics : https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01786
[4] : 3d printed circuit board : https://all3dp.com/1/3d-printed-circuit-boards-pcb/
[5] : https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-one-physicist-unrave...
I'd call the tariffs the second death of hardware though. The first was when we killed all the parts stores. That was a slower death, coupled with the loss of right to repair. But we've been making big strides in that domain, so I hope we can undo that death. If we can also undo the dumb tariffs too then ironically we might have a chance to bring back hardware which somewhat seems inline with what that party (claims to/pretends to) wants.
We ran out of people buying from parts stores - hobby electronics became less popular.
Eras of hobbies:
Mechanical
Chemical
Electronic
Computer hardware
Computer software
[What's now?]Chemical: I was thinking chemistry sets and the age when Chemistry was geeky cool (Du Pont, Uncle Tungsten).
My grand father was a structural engineer, my father studied chemical engineering, I studied electronic engineering (but got a job programming). So perhaps I was thinking more of the frontier of engineering shifting rather than technical hobbies.
It would be interesting to look at geeky hobby adverts in a magazine over time and see how the advert focus shifted.
> I was thinking chemistry sets
On the other hand, most mechanical things were relatively cheap. Cars were worked on since cars existed. People also worked on everything in their homes. There was the tradesman who takes a specific skill like being able to fix a washing machine, but a lot of these people had hobbies of building and making.
So we have a direct connection to the death of the repairman and death of the handyman. These were quite popular things even up through the 90's. You'll even see this in shows and movies.
Plus, you forgot the most popular hobby of them all: woodworking. Still alive, but nowhere near as popular as a few decades ago.
I don't think it has become harder to repair cars though. Most problems that need repair are the same old bushings, brakes, spindles, rust, bearings ...
I think it is some cultural change away from handy work in general.
Electronics have become harder to repair with smaller and more integrated circuits though.
Circle of life. ;-)
E.g. in Sweden, PostNord has a government granted monopoly and charge about $20 per imported package, which adds up fast.
It really sucks, free trade and competition is what we need.
I’ll take it on face value:
Cause domestic manufacturing for hobbyist parts is not economically viable
Contrast that with someone setting up an operation to serve the entire world, a market 1000 times larger than many localities.
You'd need an enormous hobbyist robotics market to be able to sustain a business making and selling $60 LIDARs with that wage bill.
This is just demand side. Of course producing in Sweden will be more expensive than in China - for electromechanical things, Shenzhen is likely better on every single metric...
Even if they did, the raw materials have to come from other countries. The machines probably come from other countries. Setting up little factories all over the world isn’t efficient so prices would be extremely high. Parts might be cheaper importing from other countries even with extreme tariffs.
It’s all just a mess of bad policy. We lose out when governments restrict our ability to make small, simple purchases from other countries without heavy cost overhead.
https://www.tullverket.se/en/startpage/private/online/shoppi...
> When purchasing via an e-commerce platform, you can sometimes choose which forwarding agent is to send your parcel. However, when Chinese postal services are the forwarding agent, Postnord automatically handles all mail-order parcels in Sweden.
So you end up with a big markup either way - either on the PostNord / Tullverket side, or on the delivery side.
Only for Americans, though.
Plenty of kids in third world countries can benefit from the technology involved in this project - and will.
That is a net gain for the world, in spite of what America is doing to itself.