Trump tariffs result in 10% laptop price hike in U.S. says Acer CEO
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If tariffs cause a rise in US production
This is one of the problems with the Trumpian approach to tariffs. I don't know if you hadn't noticed, but there's remarkably little manufacturing in the USA for quite some time now, but let's play this out.
The cost to set up a laptop manufacturing firm in the US is anywhere from $50,000,000 to $200,000,000. Then, you've gotta acquire all the raw materials and components to assemble the laptops, let's call that another $500,000,000. Then, of course, you've gotta staff the place, and this is in a country where we do not have a lot of people that are experienced in manufacturing. Let's call that another $100,000,000. By the time you add in R&D, logistics costs, legal and compliance (because the US is a bit more stringent than China in this area), you're talking about $1 - $3 BILLION in costs.
Now, out of the few people / companies that have enough money to actually set up a laptop manufacturer in the USA, think about how confident they'd have to be to pull this off. The largest problem is, if you spend your billion dollars and build this factory and then the next week Trump removes the tariff, you're instantly competing with foreign firms again, and you're going to be going under pretty fast.
I'd say this tariff would have to be in place at LEAST 10 years before anyone gets confident enough to spend the massive amount of money and effort quoted above. When you think about how many millions of laptops are going to get sold between now and then, it's pretty clear the American consumer is going to take a huge bath in the meantime.
Like so many things Trump is doing, this tariff is supposed to piss off China but just ends up fucking the consumer. Trump and his billionaire friends don't care if a laptop is an extra $200. That's change they can find under the couch. For your average American trying to make ends meet, that $200 sure as fuck would be useful.
So go ahead, vote Republican to "own the libs". Just don't be surprised when the sudden pain you feel in your wallet is very real.
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That 10-year time horizon is a very good point. And it's not likely that the tariff would stick around that long since every four years has a changing administration who can do whatever they please in those regards.
Personally, for me anyway, I am a Monero holder and am seeing prices fall fairly rapidly. For example, a thing of beard oil in October of 2024 was 72.9mXMR and is now 61.11mXMR (-16.2%).
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The thing is, tariffs aren't new. Manufacturing (or the lack thereof) in the US isn't new... the only NEW thing appears to be voters that can be led around by the nose and lacking any kind of critical thought altogether. What % of people that voted for tariffs thought that China'd be paying for them? Probably the same folks who thought Mexico was going to build the wall and pay for it. Last time I checked, I don't think we've received any money from Mexico for this.
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We're not the consumers Trump cares about
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That 10-year time horizon is a very good point. And it's not likely that the tariff would stick around that long since every four years has a changing administration who can do whatever they please in those regards.
Lol, you guys are hilarious. I keep seeing these comments.
Fascists don't allow fair elections.
The only way the magats are leaving office is mass insurrection / mass protests & strikes or revolution.
It most certainly won't happen at the ballot box
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Follow the money. Where do the tariffs end up?
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i work in refurbishment of the leased devices. basically laptops are either bought, or returned to a 3rd party business, to be processed and resold to a business who resells, or to another business that wants cheap devices .
these are businesses, there wont be a demand drop because business' do not behave like consumers. a good chunk of them will at times, buy things they might not need.
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I think you're being too generous. I'm probably not alone in saying that a 10% price increase gives me 0% interest in buying a new laptop.
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In the government’s coffers
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Which then get used to buy Spacex and Tesla merch.
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Regardless I'm not buying a new laptop. My 15 year old netbook is chugging along and if it suddenly died I'd sooner rehab another used one rather than make this economy look in any way good by buying new.
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TBF I was always 100% less likely to buy an Acer.
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all this does is hurt acer
I don’t think it will necessarily hurt them if other brands follow suit. It will hurt the consumers, that is.
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Winning!
So much for a free market.
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Check the labels of all the stuff in your apartment to see how much of it is made in USA, you will find barely anything that isn't a consumable is made in the US, local manufacturing was shut down decades ago as all of that got outsourced to cheaper countries in the bottomless chase for profit by greedy corporations. So why are tariffs an issue, cause there ain't any local companies making laptops for Americans to buy, and you can't just stop buying goods that society relies on, so people are forced to pay more to buy the imported goods, so you will be paying more money for these things while it takes decades to ramp up local manufacturing again and train the workers etc. if that were to even happen
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Laptops aren't funko pops, no one's buying extra cause they want to get one in every color. People buy them out of necessity. So no this isn't gonna discourage anything, maybe it'll get people to try and repair their older laptops, but because of corporate greed, most modern laptops aren't designed for repair ability, rather they go out of their way to make it harder to repair, and they don't release sufficient schematics and spare parts needed for repair, not to mention there are only so many technicians or tech savvy people with the know how to repair them.
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MAGAts be like: "I don't own a computer since I got a smartphone, it's good enough for checking my e-mails and facebook account, so it doesn't bother me."
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Chicken and egg problem. Tariffs can make work or products once deemed unprofitable, profitable once more. It is likely, the US already has computer production facilities which may at this point not profitable to scale up or enter a consumer market. Intels CPUs are produced in the states already, maybe what stopped a vendor from using them in their own laptops was strong market competition which may now be lower due to tariffs? What Im trying to say, though, is that it will take time to see the results of Trumps market intervention. In the immediate future, Acer laptops will increase in price, long term.. we can only speculate.
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I hope there is a prediction market on this at some point because I do not think it's likely that they will be able to block elections. I'd love to put my money where my mouth is.
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Oh they won't stop / block the elections initially they'll hold that first one & just conveniently get 75+% of the vote like every dictator before him.
I'm happy to put money on it if you can find a market. I've been unfortunately right too much, not because I'm smart but because you can literally pull out a history of Nazi rise and map it onto MAGA and the last 10 years. The only hard bit is guessing the timings, not what, just when.
I'd really like you guys to break out of this and prove me wrong
