It’s bad enough that many consumers are unable to purchase an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series or AMD Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card due to strangled supplies. Now and in the case of the latter brand, in what can only be described as adding insult to injury, US tariffs levied against China are now coming into effect, forcing stores in the country to raise their prices.
To recap, back in 2018, outgoing US President Donald Trump signed into effect tariffs that would add an additional 10% value of goods, on top of a number of exports that came into China. Included in that export list was, of course, electronic goods. With the signing of the second tariff, the aim was to tax US$300 billion (~RM1.25 trillion) worth of Chinese goods being brought into the US. For the record, that tariff was delayed until December 2019, and many held out hope that it would be delayed further, but that never happened.
Microcenter prices seem a little high? Lots of stock.
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Now, with the tariffs in full effect, physical and online retailers in the US have had no choices but to hike up the prices of AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 series anywhere between 7.5% and 25%, which is a lot. Specifically, the US retail store, Microcenter, was selling the Radeon RX 6800 and 6800XT at US$839 (~RM3369) and US$899 (~RM3639), respectively. That’s way higher than the card’s original MSRP, which were respectively listed at US$579 (~RM2343) and US$649 (~RM2627).
At this stage, it’s almost a certainty that the tariffs and price hikes will spillover to the GPU supplies around the world, and our country will definitely not be spared. Having said that, there is the possibility that the incoming US President Joe Biden could undo some of these tariffs and that in turn could lead to a reduction in prices for both the components needed and the final product that comes from the assembling of said components.
(Source: Reddit, Hot Hardware)
