Friday, September 28th 2018
Graphics Card Manufacturing Being Moved From China in Bid to Escape Import Tariffs - Price to Increase 5-10%
The trade war between the US and China has been raging for a while now, and graphics cards are a minimal part of the goods affected. However, these are some of the most sought-after products in the hardware community, and thus deserving of special attention. Added tariffs, however, will either a) be absorbed by companies, or b) be passed on to customers at increased retail pricing. Since companies don't want to reduce their profit margin, and know consumers will buy less product at higher prices, steps are being taken by AIB (Add In Board) partners from both AMD and NVIDIA in moving graphics card manufacturing out of China.
Options being most seriously considered and acted upon stand as Taiwan and Mexico, where the lack of any additional tariff, added to relatively cheap labor, would allow manufacturers to keep operating costs relatively stable - and thus end user pricing. However, while this search for alternate manufacturing locations continues, the tariffs are already being pressed upon graphics cards makers, and it's expected that pricing of graphics cards will be facing increases of 5-10% in the coming months. As if we needed additional price increases in some old (and especially new) product lines...
Source:
TechSpot
Options being most seriously considered and acted upon stand as Taiwan and Mexico, where the lack of any additional tariff, added to relatively cheap labor, would allow manufacturers to keep operating costs relatively stable - and thus end user pricing. However, while this search for alternate manufacturing locations continues, the tariffs are already being pressed upon graphics cards makers, and it's expected that pricing of graphics cards will be facing increases of 5-10% in the coming months. As if we needed additional price increases in some old (and especially new) product lines...
98 Comments on Graphics Card Manufacturing Being Moved From China in Bid to Escape Import Tariffs - Price to Increase 5-10%
I'm all for manufacturing leaving China.
Of course you still have to assemble things and yada yada, but a number of items I've got were done somewhere else, e.g. Malaysia.
The short version is, there would be no quality change, nor would you have train staff, as they already know how to do this stuff.
USD being used as a reserve currency in many parts of the world assures us the U.S.A. cannot be that place due to value of the USD alone.
China or another place doesn't matter in the end. Aside from political epeen it amounts to a zero sum gain for any given country, and tariffs raise the cost of living overall.
I would gladly pay an extea 20% for a card that was made from mostly US components and manufacturing.
Or you could replace Detroit with many communities hit hard by manufacturing outsourcing, plus we have the EPA to help ensure the environment they care little for in other countries is not damaged by then use of cheaper chemicals, no recapture or other controls in place to prevent ecological disaster.
But I suppose to some it is wrong to want your own country to succeed in buying products they make for themselves.