Supporting comments made earlier this year, US President Donald Trump has plans to enact additional tariffs on more than $200 billion in imported Chinese goods. Trump intends to raise existing tariffs from 10% to 25%, while also looking at other imports that don’t currently have tariffs imposed on them.
Trump said that the next round of Chinese tariffs will be on consumer electronics coming in from the country. He specifically included Apple iPhones and laptops, but game consoles manufactured in China could get caught up in this net too. Chinese manufactured products account for 61.6% of the consumer electronics imported into America. In 2017, the U.S. bought more than $522 billion worth of goods from China. While there are some concerns that tariffs on Chinese manufactured consumer electronics could end up getting passed on to the consumer, Trump minimized the effect that they might end up having. “I mean, I can make it 10 percent, and people could stand that very easily,” he said.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Trump said that the only deal he would take from China would be to open up to US competition. “The only deal would be [that] China has to open up their country to competition from the US. If we don’t make a deal, then I’m going to put the$267 billion additional (tariffs) on.” Trump is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 meeting in Buenos Aires this week. If no deal is reached during that meeting, he intends to impose tariffs of 10% to 20% on all remaining imported goods from China.
Many companies contract with Chinese factories to manufacture their goods. While Sony may not be based in China, the PlayStation 4s and other products manufactured in China still count as Chinese exports and are subject to any import tariffs. Whether or not those added fees will be passed onto consumers—or exactly how they’ll be passed on—remains to be seen.