Thursday, February 6th 2025
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ASRock to Move Manufacturing Out of China Due to Trump's Tariffs
ASRock told PCMag it plans to move some of its production out of China. "We need time to shift the manufacturing of GPU cards and other products hit by the 10% tariff to different countries," they said. This week, the White House put a 10% tax on all Chinese imports to the US, this tax applies on top of any other taxes the US already had on certain Chinese goods. ASRock also said, "While we move from making things in China to making them elsewhere, we might take on some of the cost and raise prices a bit to show the higher costs." But they added, "It's not easy to raise prices because the market is still very competitive." ASRock also told PCMag that it already pays a 25% tax on its power supplies made in China. "For items like PSUs that already have an extra 25% tax, makers will keep doing what they've been doing," the company said.
If Trump administration doesn't follow through with his threats of huge tariffs against Taiwan, the PC gaming industry will primarily feel the effects on companies like ASRock and MSI (which makes its motherboards in Shenzhen, China). These are the component and peripheral makers that have part or all of their manufacturing processes in China. ASRock's announcement isn't a huge surprise, as we saw hints of this trend in late 2024 when PC Partner (second-biggest graphics card maker, producing PCBs for brands such as Inno3D and Zotac) moved its headquarters from China to Singapore. It will be no surprise if other top-tier brands such as GIGABYTE, MSI, and ASUS take similar actions sooner or later.
Source:
PCMag
If Trump administration doesn't follow through with his threats of huge tariffs against Taiwan, the PC gaming industry will primarily feel the effects on companies like ASRock and MSI (which makes its motherboards in Shenzhen, China). These are the component and peripheral makers that have part or all of their manufacturing processes in China. ASRock's announcement isn't a huge surprise, as we saw hints of this trend in late 2024 when PC Partner (second-biggest graphics card maker, producing PCBs for brands such as Inno3D and Zotac) moved its headquarters from China to Singapore. It will be no surprise if other top-tier brands such as GIGABYTE, MSI, and ASUS take similar actions sooner or later.
20 Comments on ASRock to Move Manufacturing Out of China Due to Trump's Tariffs
I'd love to see another Taiwanese board manufacturer.
so Taiwan may not be the logical choice. who knows... a week ago no one thought Canadian tariffs were a real thing, until it happened.
From what little I've gathered in the past 5-8 years or so, Vietnamese 'manufacturing' is nothing at all like the picture us Americans got in the 90s-00s.
Needless to say, I don't think "a child sweatshop worker made this" when I see "Made in Vietnam" on something. We'll see.
I feel that Taiwan is extremely likely to 'play ball' (as the Sheinbaum and Trudeau admins did).
Especially, with TSMC screaming in the Taiwanese administration's ear :laugh:
"play ball" meaning they just pay more? TSMC can move manufacturing over to the US all they want, but 1) there aren't enough qualified engineers in the US to just set up shop, and 2) see the current administration's policy on immigration, legal or not.
the bigger long term issue is, instability like this in governance makes price increases more out of control. so if price levels and inflation were things you cared about, it will only get worse.
Mind you, some retailers are already increasing prices above original pricing, siting tariffs.
Taiwan is a very small country, so while high margin stuff like chip making makes sense there, lower margins stuff like motherboards make more sense in Vietnam. Vietnam also doesnt have the water restrictions Taiwan has. It's really not that complicated. The answers have been plain as dirt for all to see for decades, but we've been collectively gaslit into thinking these couldnt possibly be solutions because it upset some powerful people. Turns out the answers are pretty simple, you can just do the thing everyone said you couldnt do because..... ReAsOnSyOuJuStCaNtOk More likely trade concessions and agreeing to bring their cutting edge nodes stateside, which they ahve now folded on and are going to be doing with 3nm tech. As for engineeers......you dont need immigration. You have tens of millions of underemployed people in country, TRAIN. THEM. TO. DO. THE. JOB! It's not that hard, you gotta INVEST in your employee base, just like they do everywhere outside the US.
Hey look, another solution we just havent done up till now because......ReAsOnSyOuJuStCaNtOk.
It's like people have completely forgotten how influential america was in the semiconductor race and the can do attitude that built the most incredible industrial powerhouse until china showed up. Now its all "oh well you cant do that because these reasons and you cant just train people you cant just build there what about a goose species we have to import 10 million people and raise taxes instead we just cant do anything about it" runaway defeatism. This instability was inevitable, it's been allowed to percolate since the 70s when we collectively decided to stop investing in our best and brightest and rely on mass immigration to fill our needs, until that became unsustainable too. Eventually you have to either rip the bandaid off and start rebuilding the industries and knowledge bases you outsourced to save pennies 50 years ago, or accept downgrading your economy, culture, and society to 2nd then 3rd world tier while giving up your influence on a global scale.
while the reasoning is sound, I ask: at what cost to the existing economic structure, and will we be able to see the results before the entire supply chain is upended and remade into something unrecognizable?
on your point about "just train the engineers" - could you perhaps enlighten on a timeline needed to train said engineers and the costs associated with it? and the timeline for deploying the same level of fabs and supply chain? I put engineers and immigration into the same sentence because it is a well known fact that we have underinvested in our education system for decades, so to expect this pool of human capital to appear in the next 5 years magically because of training is just unrealistic.
and at the end of the day, I have no problem with more domestic manufacturing. let's also be realistic and admit that this will cause the prices to go up by a lot, which is basically not the goal that the average American wants, right? I mean, they did vote the current administration in to lower prices...