The US lifting of import tariffs on GPUs from China has already led to a drop in some GPU prices in America.
Asus has promised the prices of some of its graphics cards will decline by up to 25 per cent, starting next month. The company is cutting prices on Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30-series graphic cards on April 1, and will also cut the prices of RTX 3050, 3060, 3070 and high-end 3080 and RTX 3090 GPUs at a later point.
“As a result of the latest tariff lift on Chinese imports from the Office of the United States Trade Representative, gamers and PC enthusiasts will see lower prices on starting on April 1st, 2022. Asus is among the first to pass these savings on to its consumers,” Asus said in a statement on Monday.
The US trade rep last week decided to lift tariffs on 352 of 549 imports. The list includes GPUs, which the agency described [PDF] as a “printed circuit assemblies for rendering images onto computer screens (graphics processing modules).”
Essentially, from what we can tell, prices of at least some graphics cards went up in the United States due to these tariffs being put in place, with the cost passed onto buyers. The shortage in chips in general also forced up prices as demand outstripped supply in the pandemic. Now, with these import duties removed, some prices are going back down somewhat. This doesn’t guarantee you a card; there still needs to be enough supply to meet customer orders.
China has many chip testing and assembly operations, and was thriving in exporting components before tariffs slowed down shipments of GPUs and other electronics.
US imports for a category of components including GPUs from China totaled $1.57 billion in 2021, a drop from $3 billion in 2020, according to information extracted by The Register from the US International Trade Commission website.
American imports of that category from China peaked in 2018 at $4.4 billion. After tariffs were imposed by the Trump administration that year, imports from China on that product category dropped to $1.38 billion in 2019. By comparison, imports of GPUs and related products from Taiwan, which wasn’t subject to tariffs, totaled $5.7 billion in 2021.
The tariff on products likes CPUs from China remains at 35 per cent according to information on the US Customs and Border Protection website. Trump initially imposed a 25 per cent tariff.
With tariffs lifted, board makers could resume GPU imports from China. Public import records show ASRock America, a subsidiary of Asus, importing VGA cards to the US from China-based Amertek Computer Shenzhen in July 2020. ®
source: The Register
