(Credit: Joseph Maldonado/PCMag)
A dormant 25% tariff on Chinese-assembled graphics cards and motherboards will stay on hold for another three months after the Trump administration opted to extend the exclusion.
The 25% tariff was supposed to take effect over the weekend. But on Saturday, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) announced a last-minute pause that will last through Aug. 31.
"The US Trade Representative’s decision to extend these exclusions takes into account public comments previously provided, previous advice of the advisory committees, and the interagency Section 301 Committee,” it says.
The statement suggests Trump officials want to give affected vendors more time to transition their manufacturing away from China before reactivating the tariff. In the past, PC component vendors, including Nvidia, have indicated that most GPU production still occurs in China, which is already home to much of the world’s electronics manufacturing.
The 25% tariff was originally introduced during the first Trump administration as part of a Section 301 investigation into China's trade and technology policies. But over time, both the Trump and Biden administrations temporarily exempted Chinese-made GPUs and motherboards from the duties, freeing vendors from paying the added import cost, at least for a while.
The good news for PC builders is that the USTR noted it “may continue to consider further extensions and/or additional modifications as appropriate.” Still, the Trump administration has repeatedly talked about introducing a new set of tariffs focused on foreign-made semiconductors and devices that carry them. Last week, Trump also accused the Chinese government of violating its preliminary trade truce, raising the spectre of more tariffs to come.