The Biden administration is temporarily lifting the Trump-era tariffs on PC graphics cards imported from China, which might provide some pricing relief for GPU buyers.
The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) today granted 352 exclusions to the Trump-era tariffs, which had imposed a 25% duty on many electronics components manufactured in China.
The exclusions include “graphics processing modules” and “printed circuit assemblies, constituting unfinished logic board,” which cover PC graphics cards and motherboards. Additional exclusions were granted for PC desktop cases and trackpad units valued at over $100, but not for power supplies exceeding 500 watts.
The exclusions will last until Dec. 31, 2022. They're also retroactive and apply to qualifying imports dating back on Oct. 12, 2021.
USTR enacted the exclusions to prevent the Trump-era tariffs from causing “severe economic harm” to US interests, including for small businesses and critical supply chains. Numerous tech companies—including Nvidia, Apple, and HP—had urged the Biden administration to lift the tariffs on electronics components that continue to be chiefly made in China.
GPUs "are not manufactured in the US and in only limited amounts in Taiwan,” Nvidia told the USTR in December. “Efforts to create new capacity in countries that presently do not manufacture such products (such as the US and Vietnam) were unsuccessful and were severely hampered by the fallout from COVID-19.”
The Trump administration itself also granted exclusions on the tariffs back in 2019. However, the exemptions lasted only until Dec. 31, 2020. This prompted several vendors—including Asus, EVGA, and Zotac—to raise prices on their graphics cards, citing the import tariffs and rising operational costs.
The big question is if the tariff exemptions lead to actual price decreases for GPUs. The costs for graphics cards has been sky high over the last year due to other factors such as the chip shortage and the massive demand from both consumers and cryptocurrency miners. At the same time, many manufacturers have been raising costs because buyers have been willing to pay up, according to analysts.
So it’s possible that GPU prices could remain high until demand significantly declines. Nvidia itself says buyers of the company's RTX 3000 graphics cards have been spending $300 more than they previously did to replace their old GPUs.