Tariffs take new tech off the shelf
Sales for everything from game consoles to computers have been paused as companies calculate a potential price hike.
The markets may be feeling more confident after U.S. president Donald Trump paused several tariffs, but a regular consumer gearing up for their tech purchase has reason to be less optimistic.
Tariffs on China have been dialed up further, which is likely not going to calm any of the companies that have held back or stopped selling products as they wait and see what the impact will be.
Nintendo was supposed to begin pre-orders for the Switch 2 today, but had to pause them in the U.S. and Canada to assess how tariffs could change the console’s already higher-than-expected pricetag.
Razer took down product pages for its gaming laptops, including the upcoming Blade 16.
Many hobbyist products, from Framework laptops to tiny Game Boys, have also been shelved because tariffs would mean .
Chipmaker Micron didn’t stop sales, but was reportedly planning a to-be-determined surcharge.
Why it’s happening: The solution is not as simple as jacking up the price of a product by the amount of costs tariffs could add. For one, that equation can be tricky, since consumer tech has so many different parts and materials from so many different places. But a simple one-for-one price increase may risk pricing a product out of the market. Some companies may decide to cut their margins to make sure people can actually afford to buy their stuff in the current economic landscape.
Shipping solution: Some companies are looking for literal ways around the tariffs by bringing products in from countries other than China, but for the last few weeks, the solution to mitigating the impact of tariffs was “ship as much stuff as we can as fast as possible.”
Apple reportedly sent five planes full of iPhones to the U.S. from India to beat the tariffs, and is considering shipping more devices through India.
Dell, Microsoft, and Lenovo also pressed their suppliers to get as many products onto U.S. soil as they could before tariffs kicked in.
Nintendo said it had already sent some completed Switch 2s to North America to get ahead of demand, but that now also means they have a bunch of consoles in storage that weren’t charged the new tariffs.
But: Aside from a few minor tweaks, it’s really unlikely that this is going to result in a complete supply chain restructuring. Those close to Trump have frequently used making an iPhone in the U.S. as an example, but doing that there — or in Canada, or any single country — is nearly impossible because of how complicated Apple has made its supply chain in order for its incredibly intricate phones and computers to be affordable to consumers. The same principle applies to most other pieces of consumer tech.