The CEO of electronics specialist Best Buy says that "price increases for American consumers [are] highly likely" as a consequence of tariffs going live today. Meanwhile, the CEO of Target reckons that tariffs mean "prices will go up". So, if you're in the market for a GPU and you spot anything near MSRP when Nvidia's RTX 5070 and AMD's RX 9070 and 9070 XT new graphics cards go on sale later this week, it might be an idea to jump on them before the tariffs hit the next batch of cards.
CNBC reports that Best Buy’s Corie Barry said China and Mexico are the company’s top two import territories, with 55% and 20% of its products sourced from those countries, respectively. “We expect our vendors across our entire assortment will pass along some level of tariff costs to retailers, making price increases for American consumers highly likely,” Barry said on Best Buy's quarterly earnings call with investors.
As for Target, its CEO Brian Cornell was speaking specifically about the impact of tariffs on Mexican goods, while the company only sells fully built PCs and laptops rather than components. So, Cornell's comments aren't as directly relevant to electronics and PC hardware as Best Buy's observations.
However, Cornell more broadly observed, "we're going to make sure that we do everything we can to protect pricing. But if there's 25% tariff, those prices will go up."
As of midnight last night, the Trump administration's 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico went live, with a further 10% tariff added to goods from China on top of the 10% tariff already imposed in January.
Exactly how it all plays out from here is tough to say. “We’ve never seen this kind of breadth of tariffs, and this of course impacts the whole industry. So it’s not just a Best Buy question, it is a broad industry question. And I say that because that makes the estimation of the impact all the harder,” Best Buy CEO Barry said.
Its impact on the prices of things like GPUs will be even harder to judge. Graphics card pricing has been extremely volatile in recent years, so it will be hard to say with confidence that any further spike in prices is definitely a direct consequence of tariffs.
Moreover, the first tranche of Nvidia RTX 5070 and AMD RX 9070 and 9070 XT graphics cards will have landed in the US before the additional 10% China tariff hit. So, you might not expect an immediate impact at launch later this week.
Likewise, given how fast things can change, it's possible some or even all of the tariffs may be revoked in short order. With that knowledge, might wholesale importers hold fire on bringing product in for a period, leading to even more GPU shortages?
At the moment, none of it seems like good news. If a lot of graphics cards are imported from China in the near future with the aim of boosting supply, they'll be hit by 20% tariffs, the cost of which will no doubt be passed on to gamers. If importers hold off hoping to avoid paying the tariffs, then supply will be constrained, which also tends to push prices up.
As things stand, then, all the trends seem like they are pointing in one direction. And it's not good. All of which means that if you're in the market for a circa $500 to $600 GPU and you see Nvidia's RTX 5070 or AMD's RX 9070 or 9070 XT on offer at or near their MSRPs when they go on sale tomorrow and Thursday respectively, it may not be a bad time to buy. That's arguably even true with the RTX 5070 being a fairly major disappointment.
Either way, it's all more than a little disappointing and frustrating. Just as AMD's RDNA 4 cards promise to make things more competitive and Nvidia has been making positive noises about RTX 5070 supply, tariffs could push up prices all over again. Will the GPU market ever return to normal? It doesn't look likely at the moment, that's for sure.
