United States President Donald Trump's new reciprocal tariffs have been causing widespread chaos all over the world, even going as far as to delay pre-orders for Nintendo's shiny new Switch 2 console.
However, as we've touched upon previously, they will have a dramatic effect across pretty much every realm of consumer electronics due to the fact that some of the countries that have been hit hardest—China, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam—are responsible for producing many of the world's most popular electronic devices, as well a the components and chips used in many retro-focused items, including the superb RetroTink range of upscalers.
RetroTink creator Mike Chi has been vocal about the issues these tariffs create in the past, but, in light of Trump's expanded push, has spoken out on social media about how they will impact his own business.
"The new tariff schedule is likely to cause us significant difficulties," said Chi. "In the near term, our plan is to absorb the cost by prepaying the duties for US customers. However, this may make the 2X devices uneconomical in the long term and setback the dongle release. Shipping costs and times may increase, especially since the ports won't have experience collecting payment on this volume of shipments. Unfortunately, domestic manufacturing does not appear to be a viable solution in the near to medium term."
When informed by one person that he could simply move production to the US, Chi replied:
You’d still have to import 80-90% of the materials since the USA doesn’t make chips anymore. So… that does absolutely nothing to help.
Certainly could go back to the good old days of soldering tinks in my garage. The problem is that 80-90% of the components (think microchips) are made in Taiwan, Korea and China. Until if/when USA regains this capability (think a decade), domestic assembly is not a solution.
Chi's stance was backed up by Voultar, creator of the Wii U Nand-Aid and SNES Edge Enhancer:
I'll echo this. The United States doesn't have the manufacturing infrastructure to be competitive (price-wise) for small business and firms that don't have deep pockets to pay 800% of what the current manufacturing rate is.. I'll be 50 before we can do that here in the states..
Voultar also adds that "the value of the products that I design isn't in the manufacturing processes or the cost of manufacturing, it's the intellectual component. These are just chips and resistors until I put them into a configuration that works. The value of manufacturing is now becoming disproportionate to the value of intellectual property, and that's a huge problem for the entire economy."