U.S. consumers will delay or forgo technology upgrades if President Donald Trump imposes a new round of 25% tariffs on Chinese goods, slowing the U.S. innovation engine, technology industry executives said on Monday.
Trump’s administration is preparing to levy tariffs on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese imports after a public comment period ends on July 2 if the U.S. and Chinese presidents cannot relaunch talks to end their trade war.
The two countries have been at odds since July 2018 over a host of U.S. demands that Beijing adopt policy changes that would better protect American intellectual property and make China’s market more accessible to U.S. companies.
Consumer technology products, including cellphones, laptop and tablet computers, smart speakers and video gaming consoles, would make up $167 billion of that $300 billion total, or more than half the target list, said Sage Chandler, vice president of international trade for the Consumer Technology Association.
Chandler, whose association represents major tech groups including Apple Inc, Facebook Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Intel Corp, told the hearing the proposed tariffs would extend a ripple effect that would spread through the U.S. economy.
MacDailyNews Take: Again: No pain, no gain.
Some pain has to be inflicted in order for the parties to be compelled to the table to agree on a more balanced trade pact.
Balance will come, perhaps sooner than many think.
I’m cognizant that in both the U.S. and China, there have been cases where everyone hasn’t benefited, where the benefit hasn’t been balanced. My belief is that one plus one equals three. The pie gets larger, working together. — Apple CEO Tim Cook, March 24, 2018
“…no pain, no gain”
MDN entitlement shrug? “Yeah, we can afford it, the rest of you along with the company can go fsck themselves” Right?
Look, we can all agree that China’s trade with the rest of the world, particularly IP theft, is grossly unbalanced and arrogantly illegal. But if the forty intervening years since the Tiananmen Square massacre, means anything, it’s that China’s rulers hold no qualms when quashing dissent. And if the intent of tariffs is to provoke massive job losses of Chinese workers and thus put pressure on their leaders?…well I have a bridge to sell you.
Even if it did work and there was regime change, Apple will die as a consequence.
I’d be surprised if the Chinese capitulate.
It’s more likely Trump will be the one eventually backing down and then doing what he does best, declaring victory after getting his ass handed to him following another failed business deal.
Nationalism and separatism destroy wealth! And lead to war…
International collaboration, free trade and globalisation create wealth.
It’s only those who are afraid of change who react with dumb and stupid tariffs.
I am ready to upgrade — waiting on the keyboard issues to settle out. For a typical MacBook pro customer I suspect using macOS Catalina is going to feel A LOT like using their iPad.
By the time this dream Mac comes out I can buy (1) a Dell with 15″ OLED display, latest processor, Radeon Vega, 32GB ram, etc AND still have enough pocket change to get (2) an iPad Pro 12.9
The keyboard is the killer. Jobs would never have let that cat out of the box.