The many ways tarrifs will hit electronics
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
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 sure, these are things I don't need but they were on the cusp of affordability from the point of view of a hobbyist and so I indulged — and I will not now because they will now cross that threshold.
And I expect to see the price double on my Zenni glasses going forward. I used to like to find old medium-format cameras from Asian countries on eBay (probably not now). I already bailed on purchasing what would have been my first drone with what has happened to the prices on them.
Aliexpress I expect will adapt to end (or at least sharply curtail) free shipping promotions and start charging for shipping (which will not be tariffed), which better aligns what you’re actually paying for anyway.
So, getting 100 transistors for $1.02 and free shipping with $10 total might not be a thing any more, but $0.25 for those transistors and $0.75 for shipping with a $10 minimum might be (and is probably closer to the true economics than $1 and free shipping via airplane).
They're.... high.
So those $0.25 transistors - after June 1st - come at $50.25 plus shipping.
[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr...
Yes, we should always strive to do that.
I haven’t gotten something from Aliexpress “sent through the international postal network” in a very long time (15 months or more and I think probably several years). Most everything I get comes from an Aliexpress-run line haul (which brokers the export and import customs clearance) and then is delivered by a local carrier (usually UniUni or another one they started calling themselves recently).
Sometimes they use Cainaio which uses USPS for last mile delivery, but based on the timings of tracking events, I think are still line-hauled and cleared by Cainaio as the broker rather than via the “international postal network”.
Both of those case would fall under the first of the sub-bullets ("will be subject to all applicable duties") rather than the second.
I agree the $50 would kill the current cheap [postal] shipping of PCBs, but I’m pretty sure JLCPCB, PCBWay, etc will all switch to line hauls as well (which might even end up being cheaper than DHL that I usually pick now).
It’s annoying, but I don’t think it marks the end of cheap hobby electronics parts; they just got a little less cheap.
That's an interesting thing to say after tariff-on / tariff-off high intensity workouts almost every day. Not to mention the great desire to fire everyone standing in the way of the glorious inflation... did you take that into account while calculating the "little less cheap" thing?
Just read the executive order linked in presto8's comment (above yours) and tell me you are sure what it means. Spaghetti legislation is nothing new but this is worse than a noodle trash container in the back yard of a Chinese restaurant. In the age of AI... presumably.
In Europe these kind of decisions take months of meetings and consultations.
But we don't. What we do have is pathological mistrust of our political opponents in the government. More so on the right, but it's fairly pervasive. So "small government" gets used as a way to trip up your opposition when it's in power, but as soon as you get the reins, it's full steam ahead.
This started with Obama. The audacity of a black man to be president had so many people I thought were reasonable saying, with no hint of Jest, that he was the Antichrist. Suddenly mustard flavors and suit colors were signs of the apocalypse. And ever since then the left have been "the enemy within" meant to be rooted out.
Trump, of course, spent his time amplifying this message. And his campaign and presidency is what drove the left into pathological fear.
Conservative racism poisoned the blood of our nation yet again.
I’d be very curious to see the shape of the curve of small parcel orders (or just overall AE volume) in the 60 days leading up to April 30.
Things are changing very quickly, so it's hard to keep up. But I believe this was revised on April 9th to $100 dollars a package from HK or PRC on May 2, and $200 a package starting June 1.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/modi...
> (b) increase the per postal item containing goods duty in section 2(c)(ii) of Executive Order 14256, as modified by the Executive Order dated April 8, 2025, that is in effect on or after 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on May 2, 2025, and before 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on June 1, 2025, from 75 dollars to 100 dollars; and
> (c) increase the per postal item containing goods duty in section 2(c)(ii) of Executive Order 14256, as modified by the Executive Order dated April 8, 2025, that is in effect on or after 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on June 1, 2025, from 150 dollars to 200 dollars.
They already had to make a much bigger adjustment when they stopped being able to dump packages onto USPS, and from my experience it improved the delivery times dramatically. That's the thing about this ham-fisted "tough on China" authoritarian kayfabe - China isn't just some monolithic entity just sitting on their hands, they're now the distributed innovators operating in a nimble fashion.
With their "Standard Choice" shipping, for me where I am, that means that my stuff is sent from New York to me in Ohio with USPS. There's no customs forms attached when it comes my way, nor should there be: I didn't import anything.
How it gets from wherever it started to New York is not my problem -- just as it isn't my problem with the other imported stuff I buy, from any other place that I buy it (whether from Amazon or the bricks-and-mortar store on the corner). They import things in bulk, and the importer pays tariffs as they do so. The cost of them doing this is built into the price that I paid up-front.
The recent non-committal slapstick comedy approach of the current administration does make things hard to predict, but: I predict that a widget that used to cost 50 cents to buy on AE with Standard Choice may end up costing me a dollar or two -- a huge increase as a percentage, but meh. It's not like that 50-cent widget going to suddenly cost fifty bucks or something.
(Now, that said: I have bought inexpensive widgets from China that I imported directly -- sans Standard Choice. But that's different. In these instances, the seller just puts my widget in the mail on their side of the world, and it shows up in the mail on my side of the world -- with a customs form stuck to it. Elimination of de minimis will affect the things that I import in this fashion in a very expensive way because that customs form is going to have an additional price attached to it.)
Since what you say would imply that if I order something from Aliexpress right now (so it wouldn't clear customs until May 4th or so), that my package wouldn't get tariff-impounded but Aliexpress would just eat the increased tariff cost - how sure are you about this? The last Standard Choice packages I received I didn't really pay attention to if they had customs forms, and don't really know the rules around that anyway (ie could there just be an electronic customs form and not a physical one attached to the package)
Stuff that ships regular-way comes via usually comes via China Post and always with a customs form that is usually somewhat dubious (wrong item description, wrong value, checked "gift" box, etc). This always feels like just I'm buying from an individual seller and importing directly; like the equivalent of how buying internationally from small sellers on US eBay is.
Stuff that ships Standard Choice comes without any of that (and also often gets consolidated into a singular larger bag that has smaller bags from different sellers inside of it). When they're not consolidated, then the individual bags are always re-labeled with a paid USPS mailing label over the original. However it is that my Standard Choice orders are handled, they always show up in my mailbox looking like very-normal domestic mail and there are no customs forms to be seen.
So least in terms of logistics, Standard Choice has every appearance of being very centralized and bulk-oriented -- including within the US.
In terms of certainty: That's all that I'm certain of, and I'm only certain that it is this way for me here where I am.
The rest (eg, how this actually plays out in the future) is speculation on my part. I think my speculation may be correct, but I do not know that it is correct. I feel confident, but I won't be able to know if my confidence is misplaced until after the dust settles. They're obviously free to restructure any or all of this, and are incentivized to do whatever it is that makes them the most money.
FWIW my Choice packages have been showing up by consumer car courier rather than USPS.
I've got a couple of things still coming that I ordered late. They should be clearing customs before the 2nd, so hopefully I won't have to find out what actually happens!
I only know about this >.< much about how things like customs and tariffs actually work.
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.
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.
If you're an IT professional in the US Government, I would argue you have an obligation as a concerned citizen to make some local backups of the code powering the systems you work on every day and keep them somewhere safe...
I suppose the good news for them then is that if tariffs fail to replace the 20-25% of income tax that would be lost by eliminating income tax on people making under $150k and it has to come from raising taxes on the folks making over $150k it would only be a 25-33% tax increase on them.
People really don't comprehend how much money the top 0.01% makes.
The scam of income tax is that it's progressive on paper but not in practice.
Perfectly put. It's always bothered me that the tax brackets don't continue on in a logarithmic fashion, e.g. new brackets at 1.5 million, 15 million, 150 million, etc.
I don't think stepped-up basis should go away though, otherwise it's just the government getting a second cut of the inflation it causes.
The bigger issue for society is that our equity markets just don't have any real risk of losing your lunch anymore, so these strategies emerge.
(another one in the same vein is that when you donate an appreciated asset, you get a tax deduction of the unrealized value)
That they have to pay back with interest. This made a little sense except for short-term loans when one had liquidity issues when interest rates were close to zero or in very, very limited circumstances where someone knew they were close to death - but that more has to do with the broken way we handle taxing inheritance.
With the prime rate is 7.5% today, it makes far less sense.
> "re-invest" (no profit) into durable assets for their business
Capital expenditures aren't subtracted from revenue. They have no effect on profit.
This is a cheap slight of hand to confuse unsophisticated readers. It has effect on taxable profit since much of cap ex is deductible.
Since when?
Last I checked, capex was not deductible. You can deduct depreciation of assets over time, but that's not going to offset profit to create a loss unless you're spending far more money than you profited (by say, taking out loans).
There is the expiring bonus depreciation provision on a limited limited class of assets which would let you create a loss, but even that's subject to recapture if you sell those assets.
Trump has openly talked about his plan to replace income tax with tariffs for years. Not just for "earnings under $150k" -- that was some post-facto inventions by Howard "Used Car Salesman" Lutnick on some news program appearance after tariffs were proving spectacularly unpopular -- but Trump has constantly ruminated on the grand old days of the 1890s, at least when he isn't talking about that ol' timey word "groceries" or showerheads, light bulbs and coal. And every economist save a few nuts like Pete Navarro (or his associate Ron Vara) have soundly announced that it's an incredibly stupid plan.
Here in reality, thus far the only tax break offered up has been an extension on tax reductions for the super rich. No tax free tips, overtime, etc. Only the super rich have benefitted.
Further, it economically makes zero sense and Trump has repeatedly argued completely contrary "wins" from his tariffs: both that all of the manufacturing and other production will return to the US (ignore that the US has effectively full employment, and such would be massively inflationary without a dire reduction in US quality of life), yet somehow he's going to make trillions from tariffs, which would require such an egregious tariff rate that there would be no imports at all and thus no tariff income. Federal spending would have to drop by almost 80% for tariff funding of the government to be remotely rational, and that means demolishing the military and social security.
>so he can step in an give everyone the "gift" of no income tax
Yeah, that isn't at all how Trump operates. Much like DOGE and their hilarious "$5000 cheques for all the savings" that will never, ever happen -- and quite the contrary the government financial position is more dire than ever -- Trump makes all of his promises up front. Like his tips and overtime tax claims, both of which are never going to happen. Or his amazing healthcare plan that's coming in two weeks. Or how about that line of countries offering everything and their 90 deals in 90 days. This guy is the definition of overpromising and underdelivering.
There is zero scenario where tariffs even cover the current deficit. And as Trump demolishes the credibility of the USD and US TBills (people don't realize that US banks have been increasingly forced to buy these as the global market as dissolved), it's going to get drastically worse.
Getting rid of income tax will require legislation from congress. If we're in the midst of a tariff induced recession, what are the chances his party keeps congress in '26?
Also, remember when the British government tried to pass a massive tax cut funded with debt? Remember how that went down? The chances of the US being able to get rid of income tax in the next 4 years is basically zero.
Their chances will maybe be higher, if they cut income taxes.
All it'll cost is moving our already-nigh-inevitable debt crisis a few decades closer to today.
> Also, remember when the British government tried to pass a massive tax cut funded with debt?
Both Republican administrations this millennium have done exactly that. I see no reason to expect they won't do it again.
The optics of Democrats voting against a full tax cut for those earning less than $150K would be interesting to say the least.
Most of what they pay is capital gains, and usually the long-term rate (15% or 20%, depends), which is lower than all but the lowest two (0%, 12%) of seven brackets applied to people who actually work for a living.
Plus they don't pay FICA on that, which is another ~7.5% for W2 and ~15% for contract workers.
Also, they often manage to avoid even paying the long-term capital gains rate.
Looks like the top marginal rate's about 50% (including the top state rate of ~13%), but that's also way past the point where FICA's dropped off so it's not quite as bad (relative to middle tax brackets) as it looks. I can definitely see turning down ~50% of (say) $2,000 in exchange for a free Saturday if I'm already making north of a quarter-million a year (individual—brackets are higher for joint filing). Hell, when I was a freelancer, for every single vacation I took the main cost was foregone income, so I've even done basically that exact thing, though without being in that high a tax bracket. In fact, even today, I could probably take on paying work many weekends, and never do, so I make the same choice all the time despite being well under the top tax bracket.
Like, working the weekend normally isn't worth it for most people who can possibly afford not to do it, tax bracket be damned. Did these doctors and lawyers work a pretty normal number of hours that week? If so, I don't really understand what you're getting at. Seems like they just wanted to frame a normal thing most people do as a complaint about taxes.
It's almost like it's bullshit.
1) taxing consumptions instead of income has the advantage of being much harder to evade. It puts an end to tricks like living off loans or even simply detracting expenses- you cannot detract anything if you're not taxed at all;
2) only taxing imported goods means that anything that benefits the local economy can be purchased tax-free; while imports from abroad become, say, twice as expensive as before. However, you also have a much higher disposable income and, at least at the beginning, no other option.
So the gist of it would be: we levy the same amount of money as before by taxing exclusively consumptions, and we exempt from taxation all domestically produced goods because it's still money reinvested in the economy.
Sometimes, people are just morons.
Look at how Bessent had to sneak in and try and get the tariffs paused: https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-tariff-pause-navar...
There's no coordinated strategy there.
We’re already way, way beyond levels that effectively freeze all trade between the two countries.
Which, if we’re to believe the sycophants, is just the price to pay to onshore manufacturing.
The people with real power voted him in to lower taxes, and in return he is nuking the economy, neutering the Pentagon, trashing public health, isolating the US from tourists and skilled immigrants, walking public education back at least a century, killing the next generation of R&D, murdering rational climate policy with a coal-powered chainsaw, and handing government software and data to enemy powers.
The entire machinery of governance - official and public, as well as off-the-record "do as I say and I'll fund your campaign" private - has folded like tissue paper.
The only pushback is from the judiciary, and their orders are as likely to be ignored as implemented. And parts of academia.
It's astonishing.
How is that any different from what has been going on in the past 40 years... Biden kept almost all of Trump's tariffs and other policies. And Trump kept a lot of Biden's policies and added on to them.
Previous presidents did things because they genuinely believed that what they were doing was the right thing for America based on their deeply-held beliefs.
Trump has no beliefs. He does not act from rational thought. He does whatever makes him feel good in the immediate moment, without regard to the consequences or even his own prior words and deeds.
Bush, Obama, and Biden expressed coherent, reasoned ideologies and plans of action, and as presidents, acted consistently with their own words and deeds. I may have disagreed with Bush's policies, but I know that he actually believed that what he was doing was what he thought was best for America based on his ideological beliefs, because he was able to articulate why. (And those ideological beliefs didn't change on a whim and weren't centered around what was best for him personally.)
Trump doesn't issue coherent thoughts. He doesn't use reason. He can't explain why he does why he does because he doesn't act based on reason; he just goes base of whatever feels good in the second it's flashing through his brain. At the start of the month, he changed his mind on tariffs literally dozens of times in a few hours; so quickly and so frequently that even his own White House didn't know what the tariff policy was for several days. The Secretary of Treasury even said that the best place to find out what our tariff policy was is the President's twitter account (never mind that Congress determines tariffs, not the president).
Everybody is great until they're the worst ever. If someone disagrees with him for whatever reason, they're losers and traitors and maybe should go to jail. Every member of his first administration refused to come back the second time around, so he calls them all losers and traitors. He appointed Powell to the Federal Reserve chair, and now he's calling him Biden's puppet for not doing the stupid thing Trump is demanding that he do to bail him out of the other stupid thing Trump is doing. He appointed two of the justices to the SCOTUS and hundreds of federal judges and now he's calling them "out of control" because they won't just roll over and okay the unlawful things he's doing.
"US to impose tariffs of up to 3521% on south-east Asia solar panels"
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/22/us-huge-tar...
Edit: added title
Sure, for some countries it will hurt short term, but long term they will all just increase trade between each other and do perfectly fine.
China’s exports to the US are only 7% of their GDP. Even if all that went to zero, they’ll still have the highest GDP soon enough.
And the EU has free trade in it's DNA.
The EU roleplays as free traders (for exports), but if you look at their actual behaviour (particularly around agriculture) then you can see that they're also a big fan of protectionism at times.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/eu-vot...
I mean, sortof. Unfortunately both the EU/China/everyone else has been running an export led growth strategy which relies on the US consumer buying their exports.
So, buckle up everyone, it's gonna be a wild ride (and maybe read Trade Wars are Class Wars to understand where the administration may be coming from).
Nor, seemingly, does the U.S. president. It’s the same rhetoric we’ve heard from him since the mid 1980’s onward. “We’re being ripped off,” “We’re being laughed at,” “We need to fix the trade deficit…tariffs…” A case of arrested development. Going back to his earliest projects as a nominal real estate developer, the same inability or unwillingness to capitalize on the expertise of others to the detriment of most of his endeavours. Except for image-making. There he excels. This time, the project he is inevitably destroying is the global economy. And there’s no Fred C. Trump to bail us out.
They are being implemented by people that think that "evolution is just a theory", "global warming is a hoax", "vaccines cause autism and are dangerous", etc.
Free trade is a core belief of Economics as a science, from Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" until the Nobel Prize of Economics in 2024. And discarding inconvenient science is a standard among Republicans (viz their attack on universities).
They're just morons.
> I've honestly never understood the point of the tariffs.> At the risk of sounding rude, why the hell don't you understand the point of tariffs?!? Look up as many source as you can on the internet and learn something! You could also read some books.
Given the Trump tariffs are the subject of the article this discussion is attached to and those tariffs are a major current event, they're the obvious default expansion of "the tariffs."
I've honestly never understood the point of the tariffs.
wing-_-nuts said it, diego_molta quoted it, then you quoted it again and went off about it for some reason, ignoring the 'the' in the process.
Have you considered decaf?
Aren't Civics made in the US, with mostly US and Canadian parts? They might come through the tariffs without too big a hit.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/honda-shift-product...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/us/politics/peter-navarro...
And realistically even if major companies moved their businesses to the US, they would still need to pay US prices for the goods and people that would make them. I am sure someone has done a simple cost analysis, but prices would be higher regardless as it costs more to make the stuff in the US.
Although a 3090 is still a kickass GPU, it should still play new AA games for a long time (someone with a 3080).
The tarrifs have no economic purpose, they are a bullying tactic. Congress controls the ability to levy taxes for a good reason, which is to prevent executive abuse. Trump and his republican supporters are using the tarrifs like the kings of old to negotiate favors and support.
The tarrifs were applied across the board, and will slowly be trimmed back as people kiss the ring.
- Exemptions for electronics
- Unemployment at 4%, no labor to work in factories
- Raw inputs now 10%+ more expensive, meaning worse international competitiveness
- Policy uncertainty deterring investment
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
And Africa. Asia and Africa are at the forefront of mobile money adoption.
So basically, Chinese brands have a 56% market share in Africa (1.5 billion people and probably the market with the most growth reserve).
I wonder if M/S will pull back on their requirements. Of course people could move to Linux :)
[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk...
[0]https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/vat...
Curious what brand you were looking at?
Acer Nitro V kept its price at what the reviews said and that's what I ended up getting, but still weird that 2 of 3 changed
Some news sites reported Logitech products went up in price, but from we can see these are normal seasonal patterns.
Case in point. I don't *need* a new Surface , but I saw one for like 500$ off. I don't imagine being able to find one at a reasonable price during the next few years.
Really China is still playing softball here. They could just ban exports to the US tomorrow and we'll be the ones cut off from any moderately advanced technology.
I would have thought that despite the general comfort with hypocrisy of the larger Republican party, they would at least have reacted against overtly raising taxes especially to levels of hundreds of percent. But nope, use one synonym and whatever Dear Leader says goes. It's truly a cult.
> How many American houses are built in China?
Roughly 30% of the softwood lumber consumed in the US is imported, and Canada accounts for over 80% of those imports. Other key suppliers include China, Brazil, and Mexico. And that’s just lumber.
The US now imports 1.5 million metric tons of rice. See trend:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/806643/us-rice-import-vo...
> How much American electricity is produced in China?
Generating and distributing electricity requires equipment. More expensive (or hard to acquire) equipment means more expensive energy, affecting just about everything.
I think they only pulled back from doing that because it probably would have fairly-directly killed quite a few people.
My original questions were of course rhetorical, shining a light on the matter that neither the US nor any country in the world lives only on imported goods.
Since the economy, trade, and production is completely interconnected in a modern, industrialized world, then any changes in policy will have widespread effects. Including good effects.
As for the real world, there is a large variety of tariff policies around the world, and most countries implement much harsher tariffs than what Mr Trump is suggesting for America. There are many very good arguments for tariffs and against tariffs, let's talk about them instead?
Which ones?
Sorry, no. This is a common Trumpist talking point that has validated the comment you're responding to.
Every aspect of the US economy is currently wholly reliant on imports. Untangling would certainly be possible, but would require an intelligent fine-grained approach with deliberate analysis and substitution - not ham-fisted blanket import taxes. There is absolutely no sense to any of Trump's actual policies, nor the manner in which they're haphazardly announced and then constantly churned, unless the goal is simply to harm our country.
Debating and critiquing as if these might be good faith attempts at helping our country is a waste of energy that needs to be used more productively. Trumpism/destructionism thrives on our desire for rational debate, because while we debate how to build they just destroy. At this point, regardless of your political persuasion (I'm libertarian), it's time to stop drinking the Kool-aid and wake up to the fact we have a malevolent attacker in the White House. We can go back to debating the finer points of policy after we have an administration that actually puts the interests of the United States first.
You haven’t talked about anything. You just keep “asking questions” as if the rhetorical questions are actually making a point, but when they are answered and show negative effects for the US, you just pivot to some other random question.
That or you make sweeping, utterly simplistic statements like “neither the US nor any country in the world lives only on imported goods” (yeah, no one thought they did) or “changes in policy will have widespread effects. Including good effects.” (yeah, if I cut my legs off, I’ll save a fortune on shoes. Win!). You do nothing to actually talk about how “good effects” will outweigh all the bad effects or how we will magically make up for massive imports with domestic production.
> You added nothing to the discussion.
Pot, meet kettle.
Besides being blind, you might want to wake up also. Your "Mr. Trump" started a tariff war, leaving other countries no choice but to respond. If he would have went through normal sane channels, your 401K wouldn't be tanking right now. Tariffs are how the countries deal with each other, strong arming them, historically, always ends in either backing off or disaster.
<Your mental state is that you are a member of a mob who are out to squash anybody who thinks differently, and that gives you an illusion of having power. But in reality you don't know any of the people here, and the only power we have as commenters online is to exchange thoughts and ideas.>
A mob? Really? Since I don't have a window into your life, like you think you do into mine, I don't really have a rational way to respond to this statement.
And ground is useless without seeds, fertilizers, farm equipment and spare parts.
This is a small distinction with some fun inflationary effects.