(Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
President Trump plans to impose another 10% tariff on Chinese goods next week, which risks increasing the prices of laptops, phones, and PC graphics cards manufactured in the country.
The president imposed the first 10% tariff on Chinese imports on Feb. 4. He also planned to impose a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico at the same time but delayed that by a month in an effort to score concessions from our North American neighbors.
New tariffs on all three countries are now scheduled to take effect on March 4. In a Truth Social post today, Trump blamed them for fueling the fentanyl drug trade.
"Drugs are still pouring into our Country from Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "A large percentage of these Drugs, much of them in the form of Fentanyl, are made in, and supplied by, China."
He added: "We cannot allow this scourge to continue to harm the USA, and therefore, until it stops, or is seriously limited, the proposed TARIFFS scheduled to go into effect on MARCH FOURTH will, indeed, go into effect, as scheduled."
The emerging trade war threatens to ensnare numerous consumer products since many electronics manufacturers have factories in China and Mexico. PC maker Acer is already preparing to raise prices for its Chinese-made laptops by 10%. Meanwhile, Newegg has blamed the tariffs for increasing the price for Nvidia RTX 5000 GPUs.
PC vendors and manufacturers are also trying to move their production to other markets, including Vietnam and Taiwan, to try and bypass the tariffs.
Apple iPhone maker Foxconn has said it's exploring more US-based production. Still, building new factories takes years and billions of dollars. Foxconn itself tried to build a $10 billion display plant in Wisconsin during the first Trump administration but later abandoned the project due to a lack of LCD suppliers in the country.
In the meantime, more Trump-imposed tariffs are likely on the horizon. The president also plans to tariff foreign-made chips, including those from Taiwan, at “25% and higher” in an effort to push the tech industry to move its manufacturing to the US. Because Taiwan's TSMC makes the leading-edge processors for Nvidia, Apple, and AMD, the chip-related tariffs risk increasing prices for both consumer and enterprise products.
Trump has also threatened to impose a 25% tariff on Europe, which will affect "cars and all of the things," he said during a Wednesday Cabinet meeting. American cars aren't as popular overseas, largely due to their size and the cost of gas.
Earlier this month, Ford CEO Jim Farley said: "Long term, a 25% tariff across the Mexico and Canadian border would blow a hole in the US industry that we have never seen" and give foreign automakers "one of the biggest windfalls ever."