'Why PC Builders Should Stock Up on Components Now' (pcmag.com) 346
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."
Or... Buy quality components (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Supply chains and China (Score:2, Interesting)
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 e
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If you can find a way to shift the supply chains away from China have at it but you'll find that near impossible.
That's what the tariffs might help do.
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?
No. It's because I don't want to end up living in the same economic, social, and environmental squalor that 95% of chinese apparently think is a-ok.
Tariffs will not have the outcome you desire (Score:2)
That's what the tariffs might help do.
No they will not. No amount of tariffs are going to move more than marginal amounts of the electronics supply chains away from China. Worse even if the tariffs did cause damage to China's electronics industry they will cause MORE damage to our economy in the process and STILL will not result in those electronics being made in the US. Tariffs are a blunt instrument that invariably cause collateral far great damage to the broader economy. Seriously, this stuff is economics 101. Do not make the mistake of
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Seriously, this stuff is economics 101. Do not make the mistake of thinking that tariffs will result in the outcome you favor.
I haven't. Yet, somehow you that china dictating more and more of the US economy is in my interests?
I've actually been to China and clearly you haven't. Your idea of what China is actually like has no relationship to reality.
Which small, relatively affluent part of that huge country did you visit?
Interesting Thing About Tariffs (Score:5, Insightful)
People often dislike tariffs because it means more expensive goods. But they don't stop to think about why those good are inexpensive.
It all pretty boils down to the fact that, even when accounting for the cost of living, youcould not take a factory building anything in the third world andbring it to the use because of.
1. Labor laws...minimum wage, working hours, overtime rules.
2. Government regulations...safety, healthcare, discrimination, etc.
3. Environmental laws...emissions, hazardous waste disposal, etc,
Most would agree that all these regulations and laws are for the good and that we don't want a steel plant in the US operating like it does in China.
However, the same people who don't want to have the dirty, dangerous manufacturing here are more than happy to have it somewhere else and then take advantage of the cheap prices. Hence, their opposition to tariffs.
Re:Interesting Thing About Tariffs (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's not just a case of building a chip factory either, you need massive supply chains for all the other parts you need.
And that's the biggest reason why China is so cheap. It's not the labour costs, it's the supply chains and economy of scale.
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Even if you support tariffs against China for their poor regulations and human rights these tariffs are stupid. It costs billions of dollars to make a new chip foundry. Do you seriously think anyone will build one in America before the president after Trump (whether that's in 2020 or 2024) undoes these tariffs?
Well, if you support tariffs against China for their poor regulations and human rights maybe you should vote for the candidate who won't undo those tariffs.
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Even if you support tariffs against China for their poor regulations and human rights these tariffs are stupid. It costs billions of dollars to make a new chip foundry. Do you seriously think anyone will build one in America before the president after Trump (whether that's in 2020 or 2024) undoes these tariffs? It's not going to force any changes in China, just remove money from the pockets of the American consumer and put it into the pockets of the American government.
Good thing we have 80+ chip foundries in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Intel, TSMC, GlobalFoundries, Micron, Samsung, etc all make CPUs in the US. Intel is building a new foundry in AZ as we speak.
Re:Interesting Thing About Tariffs (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but tariffs themselves don't actually address any of those problems. Especially when there are no local sources for any of these goods. This money doesn't go to improve the working conditions of the poor workers. It doesn't fix any environmental problems. It rarely changes government regulations.
Let's be clear. All tariffs are are taxes paid for by consumers. They don't punish foreign countries or companies nearly as much as proponents claim.
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The theory goes that imposing tariffs on foreign goods would decrease domestic demand for that foreign good, and thereby impose economic pressure on the foreign supplier, indirectly punishing them that way.
This actually can work if the foreign demand for the product is already quite low, or at least the exception and not the rule in the first place (ie, if the country already domestically meets all or virtuall all of its own needs for the product they want to impose tariffs on), but for mainstream consum
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That works for certain classes of luxury goods, but no so well for mainstream consumer products. Because of the lack of domestic supply as an alternative, people will just begrudgingly pay more, and get less value for their money.
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Sure, but tariffs themselves don't actually address any of those problems. Especially when there are no local sources for any of these goods.
You touched on the fundamental problem here and the lack of understanding by the GP. These kinds of tariffs are good but they need to exist up front from the startup of the industry, not as some retaliation. When tariffs are eliminated and the cost of goods get externalised and production moves to another country re-introducing the tariffs only serves to depress the buying power of your local economy.
I am for basic tariffs on certain Chinese goods. However these tariffs here at the moment covering the thing
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No local sources for PC cases? Are you living on Rockall?
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Except you'd be hard-pressed to find goods for which that is true. Even modern silicon fabs are springing up in Taiwan and Japan. And with Foxconn setting up a manufacturing line in Wisconsin, the few companies that are able to take advantage of that (read "not tied to specific chip vendors") are going to clean up.
In particular, I expect Apple to make out like a band
Re:Interesting Thing About Tariffs (Score:4, Insightful)
It's really funny how things have flipped politically in America. In reality (the reality-reality kind, not the alternate-facts kind) the free market was doing a great job at improving those three points you made before the tariffs.
It's weird that it's the liberals who have become defenders of open and free markets and conservatives that have become proponents of heavy regulations, protectionism and taxes -well, taxes for everyone except Trump's buddies.
(Oh, you didn't know that Trump's tax bill is scheduled to skyrocket your taxes in a few years, while decreasing the wealthiest's taxes even more.)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Interesting Thing About Tariffs (Score:4, Insightful)
No. Progressives are just anti anything trump and/or the republicans do, and vice versa. To say that republicans aren't still interested in tax breaks for the 1%, and that progressives are not still interested in more taxation of everyone, is an outright lie.
The Liberals are doing no such thing (Score:2)
Now, Clinton Democrats (e.g. the right wing of our party that followed Bill & Hilary into becoming Republican Lite) are happy to have open borders. Hell, Hilary got caught outright saying she wanted to eliminate the borders. It was one of the reasons she lost.
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So I'm not sure what to take from this story. Why did the Japanese manufacturers iterate on quality while the EU manufacturers did not? It seems silly that the EU government had to get involved in something as trivial as vacuum cleaners when in Japan the free market naturally did that.
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Part of it is a culture in Japan where people value features and are invest a bit of time in figuring out what to buy. In Europe people just look for something in their price range and get the one with the biggest motor, because moar power must be better and its an easily understood number.
Maybe Japans small apartments have an effect too, since people value things like compact size which tends to preclude having huge motors. Also they use 100V AC, so the maximum power delivery per outlet is realistically ab
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Again, in the reality world and not the alternative-fact world you live in the democrats had no power at all to affect the tax bill in any way. During the Healthcare debates, the democrats respected the filibuster. They needed Olympia Snow's vote to get the bill out of committee. They got that by giving concessions to republicans.
Fast forward to 2017. The Republicans have trashed the filibuster completely and put the bill on the floor without going to committee. This tax bill is 100% on them. And so is the
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Right. The only generation of white men left that hasn't voted to turn the nation over tor fascist authoritarians.
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Only because they don't know the definition!
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Hint: Fascist != someone who merely disagrees with you.
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Millennials don't even remember Harry Reid.
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That's hardly the whole story. I don't see the current US government caring much about the environment or people's health. What I do see is "America first" protectionism.
To clarify, imagine that the Chinese steel plant was identical in operation to the US one, with all the labour and environmental regulations etc. Further, imagine that the cost of transport were negligible, so that the final price for both products in the US were roughly the same. Which one would you buy? More importantly, would you stil
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That used to be very true, but it is increasingly becoming less true as Chinese wages are rising and regulation is increasing while automation is becoming more accessible. Production is increasingly moving back to the US and Europe and these tariffs are only going to speed that up. This may end up being a major problem for China. Or it may not because they own half of Africa, are sitting on a ridiculous pile of cash and they are increasingly selling their stuff to their own people.
These tariffs are not her
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You are fundamentally right about tariffs. However you can be against the application of them in certain situations. You see what you propose is to level a playing field which fundamentally works only before the game has started. What's happening right now is that the playing field is leveled at half time. The jobs have left the country, the investment has occurred overseas, and the end result now is that consumers who have gotten a taste and an addiction to a certain life style and a certain cost of goods
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Do you think that Norway a thousand years ago had environmental laws and overtime rules?
The cheap labor in
That would be fine if we did that (Score:2)
Re: Interesting Thing About Tariffs (Score:4, Insightful)
better yours than... oh... wait
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In the 1960s, Bela Balassa and Pete Samuelson proposed [wikipedia.org] that if a developing country with decent labor protection starts exporting goods in large quantities, other countries' demand for its currency will reduce exchange rate disparity over time.
Red herring (Score:5, Insightful)
It's too bad that machined sheet metal is too difficult technically speaking for an American company to start producing. Whatever will we do?
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.
Hopefully the outcome of these tariffs is that another country (maybe even the US?) will step up and start producing and supplying components. It is somewhat foolish to allow one single country to have a near total monopoly on something as important as electronics.
(But more than likely some enterprising individual will setup shop in Mexico or Canada; and import the goods from China, then just ship them across the border to avoid the tariff.)
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That doesn't work.... all that does is subject that country to tariffs, effectively negating free trade.
And it's not like the current US administration hasn't already shown that they are willing to do this... so no, all it means is more expensive goods for everybody. The market will adapt... because it's still cheaper than buil
Labor intensity vs captial intensity (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org] 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 [wikipedia.org] 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.
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Only because any tariff that might otherwise be sufficient to accomplish it would only result in a domestic black market being created to meet the demand.
Tariffs are blunt instruments (Score:3)
Only because any tariff that might otherwise be sufficient to accomplish it would only result in a domestic black market being created to meet the demand.
Incorrect. The problems with tariffs is that they are a blunt instrument and they almost always have unintended consequences. You raise prices on steel and it raises prices on everything made with steel which is a far larger industry than just the steel industry. You protect a few jobs at the cost of far more. Take an economics 101 course and you'll learn how tariffs almost invariably result in a net loss to the economy of both countries individually and collectively. They almost never actually accompl
Re:Labor intensity vs captial intensity (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up. Absolutely right on. The US has been and continues to be a manufacturing powerhouse. It's just that American manufacturing involves very few people (relatively speaking) and is highly automated, involving robots and CNC machines.
There are still some things in American industry that are very labor-intensive (such as building construction and agriculture), but even those involve a very small number of workers relative to the population, and still have a fair amount of automation involved. And it's work that few Americans are interested in doing.
The problem with Trump's tariffs are that they actually punish the domestic industry and manufacturing that we have without creating the new industries promised. For example the already high cost of farm machinery is rising by 25% also now, which puts pressure on everyone else down the line. Farm machines are for the most part made with steel produced in US plants, often right next to the manufacturing plants. But the tariffs drive up domestic steel prices nearly as much as foreign steel.
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Hopefully the outcome of these tariffs is that another country (maybe even the US?) will step up and start producing and supplying components.
NZXT wants to be able to build low volume flashy cases, in a world where high volume always wins. As someone who has been waiting for ram prices to drop so has been iterating over component selection, one of the brands of desktop case that has not made it to my newegg cart is NZXT because they sell looks rather than quality or purpose. Giant glass windows instead of ventilation, rounded co
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It's too bad that machined sheet metal is too difficult technically speaking for an American company to start producing. Whatever will we do?
Here's a business idea: Why not open up a factory and start producing. I mean right now you have just had your golden opportunity handed to you right?
Or maybe despite your post you understand that bending a piece of metal and covering with spraypaint may sound like a fun weekend project, but is not as trivial when you ship 40000 of the things yearly, and propose to do so in a country where tariffs have been applied on the raw materials used by your #MAGA factory with your #MAGA workforce, all the while real
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That's a fair point actually; the flip-flopping, transient nature of american politics makes long term investments like that difficult (assuming of course I had the capital to invest in a factory, which of course I don't.)
However, others do.
Domestic manufacturing is a good thing; if we had the political capital to make it a long-term movement -- on-shoring american manufacturing, it would be in our best interest. In this particular example, a factory which uses automation to produce these metal boxes (and
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Your Dear Leader has put tariffs against steel and aluminum from Canada and a number of other countries. Even after signing the new USMCA free trade agreement the tariffs are still there and we don't know when they are going to go away.
Another tariff that is popular for the US to apply against Canada is for lumber. Every five to ten years this comes up again and again. The "problem" is supposedly that the Canadian governments (Federal and provincial) aren't charging a high enough stumpage fee (the fee to cu
I'm wondering if this'll come home to roost (Score:4, Insightful)
Normally the decisions made by a president don't show up immediately. It took close to 8 years for Obama to repair the damage from the 2008 crash. But tariffs and tax cuts are immediate. If folks don't see a positive effect they're gonna get uppity. We'll know in a few years.
Tax cuts but no spending cuts (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile Trump's tax cut wasn't as big as folks think.
It was plenty big for certain people with several commas in their annual income. That isn't the real problem though. The real problem is that they cut taxes without cutting either Medicare/Medicaid or the defense budget or social security which together account for around 3/4 of federal spending. So we continue to accrue debt at a rate of nearly a $trillion per year with no end in sight which our children are going to have to pay off sooner or later. In 2017 we basically borrowed the entire defense department budget. ALL of it.
So enjoy the party while it lasts. Sooner or later the bills will come due and your children will "thank" you for it.
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As Emo Phillips once said (Score:3)
Seriously though, gov't debt doesn't really function like household debt. Most of it (2/3rds) we "owe" to ourselves. This is the one and only thing Trump got right. Deficits don't really matter all that much. They're a boogieman of the right. Google "starve the beast" sometime. It's a trick to get you to accept education and healthcare
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...Meanwhile Trump's tax cut wasn't as big as folks think. A lot of people set their withholding lower than they should and are going to get an unpleasant surprise in April...
The tax cut is projected to increase the deficit by over 2.3 trillion over a decade [latimes.com], or 1800 / family each year. That's money that you or your kids will need to pay back with interest. The average tax cut [taxpolicycenter.org] for all households in 2018 will be about $1,200. That means the average household is getting screwed. They're spending $1800 and are thrilled to receive $1200 in return - the remaining $600 going to folks who are already richer than them.
When it comes time to pay the piper, is there any doubt on whos
Tarrifs will not last until 2020 (Score:2)
What all of the people complaining about the tariffs do not seem to get is that they are simply tools to get other countries to reduce THIER tariffs. Ours go away when the other side re-negotiates.
Trump and others have stated this multiple times yet it seems to elude many people.
Since they are merely negotiation tools, if there was a whiff they would hurt elections they would be gone. But they didn't seem to hurt Republicans any in the mid-terms; the reality is many voters either do not care about tariffs
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It took close to 8 years for Obama to repair the damage from the 2008 crash.
That damage includes
* the US federal debt, which has certainly not gone back to pre-2008 levels
Pre-2008 federal debt levels were already spiraling out of control. The 2008 crash has nothing to do with it. As long as the excessive tax cuts aren't reverted and the US doesn't stop waging stupid wars, the debt will continue to spiral out of control.
The US hasn't balanced a budget since the 1990s, and that was during the biggest economic boom in ages.
* the income inequality within US society, which hasn't been this high since the 1930s, and student loans, payday loans, and consumer debt are at near crisis levels. Much of a whole generation of americans have been left behind.
Again, not so much the 2008 crash, but the tax cuts, which are primarily for the rich.
get some furniture quality hardwood (Score:2)
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As someone who did just that let me say it's not as easy as you may think. I finally got rid of my 15 year old hand build case this year for an off the shelf one due to a component upgrade not playing well with the poor airflow and insulation properties of the materials.
Despite what it may look like, designing high end and flexible cases is actually not trivial and even companies in the business for many years can often get things quite wrong, especially when they prioritise form over function.
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Thanks god I have vintage machines for years ;-) (Score:2)
Well we can make them in the usa with the CPU'S (Score:2)
Well we can make them in the usa with the CPU'S
If the cpu's can be made in the usa why not the ram and MB as well??
Trump killed the EPA so can go USA! USA! USA!
Subject is wrong (Score:2)
Made In The USA? (Score:2)
I was hoping that there were PCs still being made in the US, but apparently not. Oh, they may be _assembling_ some, but most of the components come from overseas.
https://www.neweggbusiness.com... [neweggbusiness.com]
Taiwan? (Score:2)
OTOH (Score:2)
These more expensive cases now come with a free 'orange man bad' sticker.
He has all the subtlety and finesse of a CHAINSAW (Score:2)
The really hilarious part? (Score:2)
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A couple of points:
1. The people lining up are not necessarily the people buying the products of the companies featured in the article.
2. Given the example is a $2000 custom-built rig, we are firmly in Apple territory. The cases by NZXT in the summary can be very bling.
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The 9900K is made in the USA.
Re: But muh Jewelry (Score:5, Insightful)
I know the case isn't $2000, but people blinging out on their case are not exactly price sensitive. It's not a dig - I have a nice case because I like the look, noise suppression, vibration reduction, and the serviceability. But let's be honest, it's a frivolous expense - my old stamped sheet metal case with the sharp edges was perfectly serviceable.
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Good design and appearance matters. Just like how people will buy a Silk Suite, a fancy car... However there is stuff that appearance is secondary to functionality and affordability.
Also people will normally buy as much as they can afford to get. If a Macbook that cost $2,500 moved up to $3,000 it may end up being too much for some people. But there are also people who are just wanting to spend under $1,000 for a system. With this artificial cost added to the products, will mean you will get less for your
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Sure some people upgrade every chance they get, but those people are in the minority. Most keep their systems for at least a few years. Normally for me I upgrade when there is a big need to. I had my Laptop for 7 years before I upgrade, I keep my phone for about 4-5 years before upgrading. However for those who are on systems that really need upgrades, having to wait an extra year is just going to hurt them more.
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Yeah, but with that logic, planted stories in the industry-friendly press won't lead to increased sales for Q4. Buy now before the tariffs increase your needlessly expensive case by $5! And other FUD statements!
Won't you think of the shareholders?
Re:How much more (Score:4, Funny)
Free-range?
Re:#MAGA (Score:5, Insightful)
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The production countries will notice: undoubtedly demand for their products will fall with an increased price due to tarriffs.
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Not really.
The vast majority of sales on any product is supplying industry for other projects. The 10-25% increase in a component's price just becomes a small percentage of the final product price. All together, the final assembled product is more expensive to produce, but for no directly-attributable reason. It's not "the tariff on the case". It's "parts just cost more for this batch".
Now, that takes place over a span of years, as parts work their way through supply-chain warehouses. Computers are some of
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So the theory goes.... but for mainstream consumer products like PC's, the demand wouldn't fall enough... and any tariff sufficiently high to actually discourage the demand enough to make a difference would only result in the creation of a black market that would be large enough to make up that difference, so no.... you can't win.
Also, labor is cheaper in China not just because of poorer working standards but because the supply of labor in China is more than triple that of the USA... and simply by virtue
Re: #MAGA (Score:2)
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Except that a marginal amount of the production will be repatriated and the taxes will offset some of the income taxes the feds would collect. Meanwhile, the Chinese will be at the bargaining table to work out a FAIR trade agreement.
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You seemingly don't realize that this is just a tax on American citizens... There is no "American-made" alternative to most of these components, so it will serve only to raise the prices Americans are forced to pay while the countries of production don't notice a difference.
Well, so much for that tax break everyone got last year.
I've started to wonder if this wasn't some evil-genius type of plan by the Republican Party. First, give a huge tax break that mostly goes to the upper class, but make sure there's enough going to the lower and middle classes that a majority of people will support it. After that, impose new tariffs that increase prices of consumer goods. If they get all the numbers correct, the total revenue from the tariffs equals the total amount of the tax breaks
Re:#MAGA (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a business opportunity to make PC cases in the US so Americans aren't 'forced' to buy Chinese shit.
Apparently you missed the past decade where big businesses has been positioning to transition to using south american cheap labor instead of southeast asian cheap labor.
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Take some CV jo
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Think about WHY we don't make PC cases (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: Think about WHY we don't make PC cases (Score:2)
Boxx custom fabricates their own cases for every system they sell and seem to be doing just fine.
Their systems, however, are typically on the higher end of things.
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We know how to make them but we cannot do it as cheaply as they can in China.
It is indeed the labor, but I dont think most people here understand what the costly labor is. The costly labor isnt the people running the machines that produce the parts in a mass production environment. The costly labor is the human assemblers they need when it either isnt a mass production scenario or when they need fastest possible time-to-market.,
A company like NZXT probably cant seriously consider mass production (they arent selling millions of a case), and their time-to-market is probably importa
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A business opportunity for higher cost domestic products - maybe. The tariffs are a poorly disguised inflationary consumption tax needed to make up for the tax cuts to the corporations and wealthy.
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Local suppliers will need steel. Last I heard there are higher tariffs on that as well, because we don't make that here anymore either.
The US Steelworker's Union would beg to differ.
https://tradingeconomics.com/u... [tradingeconomics.com]
china factory's also make a lot of smog! (Score:2)
china factory's also make a lot of smog! that lowers costs as well.
Re:#MAGA (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
We are a selfish and greedy society. I'll admit to being part of the problem, though I do try and buy from non mega chain stores when possible. It's hard to do now.
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Most of these cases are just lower quality stell sheets stamped into shape by machines and then coated. The "work" is split between operating the machines and changing the manufacturing process for each part. The first set of workers are cheap but the second set of workers are more expensive. So, make a million of these and labor cost is low, build a couple thousand and labor cost is high.
Tariffs hurt many to benefit a few (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
That isn't necessarily bad if it were done across the board so as to better equalize the standard of living between all professional categories, as in that case the auto workers would also benefit on the long haul. The real problem is doing that to the lowest level of the economic pyramid, while allowing the distance between the base and the top. Then there's no real benefit, just a reshuffling that keeps the true beneficiaries intact.
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So with a 10% tariff on the cost of bringing this into the US... assuming they're passing 100% of the cost of this to customers
Assuming a typical 100% mark-up then the cost of components is 50% the retail/end-user cost of product. So if a 10% increase in a component results in a 10% increase in sale price they are making extra profit as a result of the increase in import tariff/duty.
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Cases from the 90s WTF, that shit doesn't have a USB 3.0 port on the front.
A Case from the 90s may have spare drive bays, a quick search for front panel USB hub yields results that can mount directly into a 3.5 or 5.25 inch drive bay.
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We don't even need hardware anymore since everything is in the cloud!