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'Why PC Builders Should Stock Up on Components Now' (pcmag.com)
Michael Kan, writing for PCMag: NZXT is a popular PC desktop case vendor, but the California-based company recently had to raise its prices. The reason? The new US tariffs on Chinese imports includes PC cases. In September, the Trump administration imposed the 10 percent duty, which also cover motherboards, graphics cards, and CPU coolers from the country. As a result, NZXT had to introduce a 10 percent price increase on PC cases to deal with the added costs, VP Jim Carlton told PCMag in an interview.
And building a PC could get even more expensive in 2019; US tariffs on Chinese-made goods will rise from 10 percent to 25 percent in January. "If I needed to build a system in the next six months, I'd definitely build it before the end of the year," Carlton told us. For PC builders, the tariffs risk adding a few hundred dollars to the total cost of components for a custom desktop. "If it's a $2,000 purchase on 25 percent tariffs, it's going to be a $2,500 purchase," Carlton said. "So we are very concerned with the direction of where this is going. I don't have a 10 percent [profit] margin I can just throw away and absorb the tariffs," he added. "And certainly no one has a margin for 25 percent."
And building a PC could get even more expensive in 2019; US tariffs on Chinese-made goods will rise from 10 percent to 25 percent in January. "If I needed to build a system in the next six months, I'd definitely build it before the end of the year," Carlton told us. For PC builders, the tariffs risk adding a few hundred dollars to the total cost of components for a custom desktop. "If it's a $2,000 purchase on 25 percent tariffs, it's going to be a $2,500 purchase," Carlton said. "So we are very concerned with the direction of where this is going. I don't have a 10 percent [profit] margin I can just throw away and absorb the tariffs," he added. "And certainly no one has a margin for 25 percent."
There is no law of god or men that says all electronics should come from China.
Order a quality motherboard from Japan. A GPU from Singapore. A CPU from Mexico. A PSU from Canada, and so on.
If you are human and care about human things, you should already be boycotting China.
There is no law of god or men that says all electronics should come from China.
Laws of economics do dictate where electronics come from. The overwhelming majority of the supply chain for electronics depends heavily on China because that's where the companies are located and it's been trending that way for decades. If you can find a way to shift the supply chains away from China have at it but you'll find that near impossible.
Order a quality motherboard from Japan. A GPU from Singapore. A CPU from Mexico. A PSU from Canada, and so on.
Good luck with that. You'll find the components on that motherboard, power supply, graphics card, etc are made in China even if the assembly was put together elsewhere. If you want something made with just local content be prepared to spend a fortune on it. Companies like Apple and the rest don't source from China because they like China. They do it because there are no practical alternatives.
If you are human and care about human things, you should already be boycotting China.
Why? Because you think your country is owed something and shouldn't have to compete? Because you have a jingoistic view of China and it's people? You think 20% of the world's population should just sit on the sidelines economically because it's inconvenient for Americans or Europeans?
Concern over hardware with a long supply chain like cpu's, mobo's, ram etc is one thing.. but something as stupidly simple to produce as a fucking metal box? come on.
Sure, we know how to make cheap metal boxes in the US. That's never been a problem. The problem is the percentage of labor content that goes into producing cheap metal boxes and the cost of labor. Cheap metal boxes tend to be labor intensive to make unless you make those boxes in HUGE volumes. It's more economical to have them made in a country with cheap labor. China has cheap labor and the US does not. QED they get made in China and not the US.
Goods that are capital intensive are made in countries with high labor costs but access to cheap capital. The US has the cheapest cost of capital in the world so goods that have low labor content tend to be made here. Stuff like jumbo jets, earth moving equipment, cars, CPUs, chemicals, etc. The US has a manufacturing sector worth about $3 TRILLION annually which makes one of the 5 largest economies in the world - roughly the same size as the entire GDP of the UK or Germany. We make lots of stuff but we can't compete on cheap metal boxes just like China can't (currently) compete with the US on jumbo jets.
Any time you see an idiot politician (like Trump) promising to "bring back manufacturing jobs" to the US they are promising the impossible. The only way those "cheap metal boxes" will get produced here in the US is if we experience a massive reduction in wages to bring us close to those paid in China. No amount of tariffs will change that economic reality. I'm pretty sure you don't actually want such a fall in wages to happen. The good news is that as China becomes more prosperous their wages will rise and labor intensive production will leave China for other places with still cheaper labor. Already happens in some industries.
Sounds like a business opportunity to make PC cases in the US so Americans aren't 'forced' to buy Chinese shit.
Go ahead and try since you think it is so easy. We can talk about how it went after your bankruptcy.
Here's a little clue for you though. The reason we don't make PC cases in the US has NOTHING to do with our technical ability to make such cases and has everything to do with the cost of labor and to a lesser extent cost of materials. We know how to make them but we cannot do it as cheaply as they can in China. No amount of tariffs will change that fact nor will they cause the supply chains for goods made in China to shift to the US in any substantial way.
You seemingly don't realize that increased cost will reduce demand AND create a market advantage to production of these items in the US.
Speaking as someone who actually makes products like this for a living including electronics that go into metal boxes, you could not be more wrong. If it reduces demand, it doesn't matter if the box is made in the US or China. The China+tariffs vs US made at the same price will not benefit US consumers. It means we are costing taxpayers a huge amount of money to support a tiny little industry with a handful of jobs. Explain to me the logic of making literally every PC purchased more expensive in order to gain a few hundred jobs in a niche industry? Tariffs are almost never a good idea and this is no exception.
Raise the price of steel to support the roughly 80k steel workers in the US and you raise the price of every car made which hurts 2 million auto workers + everyone who buys a car. You are robbing the many to benefit a few.
No, it's because China as the supply chains. A US designed GPU has to be combined with a large number of other parts to be useful, and they are all made in vast quantities in China. So either you ship them all to the US individually for assembly, or you make the GPU and assemble the card over there and ship the finished product.
Conditions in Chinese factories are actually pretty good for the most part. Demand from western manufacturers, a desire to be seen as high quality to get business from the west and the necessity of things like a clean environment and consistent quality to produce highly complex goods has improved things greatly. Of course there are still some bad ones, particularly for textiles, but the idea that it's "slave labour" that is driving China's competitiveness is a myth.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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