Big price increases for GPUs and other hardware due to tariffs

Tom's Hardware points out exemptions for the tariffs levied on China expired with the arrival of the new year. For US consumers this is bad news as the price of a lot of products is getting a lot higher. ASUS already publicly communicated a price hike for its motherboards and video cards. Other manufacturers are expected to follow soon, or have already silently raised prices. The list of affected products is long, it also includes cases, power supplies, solid state disks, etc. Not all of these products had exemptions. Because GPUs are relatively high-priced items, the impact will be most noticeable for this product category.

The expiring tariff exclusions result from import tariffs instated by the Trump administration in 2018, but following pushback from a handful of players, specific goods fell under exemptions. The taxation rate ranges anywhere between 7.5 percent and 25 percent, so depending on which pricing bracket GPUs fall in, the price increases for consumers can be significant.

Besides the tariffs issue, global prices are also rising due to COVID-19 and shortages of various components. With the significant drop in international passenger traffic, shipping costs have gone up too. It's a common theme that a lot of consumer electronics products are now hard to find at the MSRP. Take the Sonos Move for example. Originally launched at $399 but now it costs almost $450 on Amazon.