IT’S OFFICIAL, FOLKS! Trump thinks he can just slap tariffs on our friends abroad and watch us ‘compete’ again? Newsflash: this only hurts the little guy (and the planet). Just got word from Acer CEO that those tariffs have already led to a 10% price hike for laptops in the US. That’s right, we’re paying more for the very devices that are supposed to help us succeed in an era of ‘American greatness’. Meanwhile, Trump is too busy coddling his corporate pals to care about the real American people. Wake up, sheeple! It’s time to stop voting for politicians who only look out for their buddies on Wall Street.
The same amount of laptops will come over, we’ll just be paying more for them. The production of laptops from scratch in the U.S. will very likely never happen. The best case scenario where we do become an electronics manufacturing powerhouse would take literally decades.
If they cost more, it would also disincentivize spending on the laptop unless it’s necessary. So theoretically fewer laptops should come over. If you don’t buy a laptop because your laptop isn’t really in need of replacement, then you just saved 100%. Or you could also buy a used laptop that’s newer than the one you have from somebody else in good condition and save some percentage of what you would have paid for the new one anyway.
Just as an example, I’m rocking a laptop from 2014 with an Intel 3rd generation Core i7. Obviously the newest Intel is the 13th generation, but you can find Intel 7th and 8th generation laptops which are much newer than mine for decent prices.
No one buys an Acer laptop because they want it like a new iPhone. They buy it because they have to.
Laptops aren’t funko pops, no one’s buying extra cause they want to get one in every color. People buy them out of necessity. So no this isn’t gonna discourage anything, maybe it’ll get people to try and repair their older laptops, but because of corporate greed, most modern laptops aren’t designed for repair ability, rather they go out of their way to make it harder to repair, and they don’t release sufficient schematics and spare parts needed for repair, not to mention there are only so many technicians or tech savvy people with the know how to repair them.
Erm
LOL, just goes to show. I don’t keep up with processors close enough, apparently.
Correct, except that more people buying used laptops will incentivize people to upgrade more often as they can depend on a strong secondhand market to recoup some of the cost of the new one by selling the old one.
That’s a fair point. The way I see it, it’s similar to buying a car. If you buy a new car, as soon as you drive it off the lot, it loses $3,000 in value and depreciates quite a bit within the first year. If you buy a one-year-old used car, it’s still in pretty good condition and has had the “new” tax deducted already.