Starting in March, Acer laptops will see a 10 percent price hike in direct response to President Trump's tariffs.
The announcement came from Acer's CEO Jason Chen in an interview with The Telegraph. The move is coming because of a 10-percent tariff that Trump has imposed on laptops manufactured in China.
“We will have to adjust the end user price to reflect the tariff,” Chen told The Telegraph. “We think 10% probably will be the default price increase because of the import tax. It’s very straightforward.”
Clear cause and effect
While it has been speculated how Trump's tariffs will affect products imported into the United States, this is the first clear cause and effect of the imposed taxes.
These price increases includes everything from powerhouse gaming laptops like the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI to budget-friendly options like the Acer Chromebook Plus 515.
As an example, currently the Taiwanese company's most expensive option is the Acer Predator Triton which starts $3,799.99. The tariff bumps that price up to $4,179.99 and that doesn't include any markups retailers might make to recover the cost of the tariff as the retailer is who actually pays the initial tax.
As the Telegraph notes, Acer is the fifth largest seller of laptops in the United States behind HP, Dell, Lenovo and Apple. Beyond that, nearly 80% of laptops imported to the US are made in China.
Just the beginning
The general 10 percent tariff on all Chinese-made goods started this month. Trump has previously claimed that tariffs would make prices go down and induce companies in the US to create more jobs. Recently, President Trump has started to admit that prices might go up.
Nearly 80% of laptops imported to the US are made in China.
As the tariffs start to come online, we will likely begin to see more companies announcing price increases. We've put together a guide to how tariffs work and how Trump's broad taxation on Chinese products will possibly affect you.
According to Chen, the company is exploring moving some production out of China and Taiwan, something the company did during Trump's first term when he imposed a 25% tariff on Chinese-manufactured desktop computers.
Chen also noted that the price increases may take a few weeks to actually take affect, indicating that March is likely when we'll see the increases hit.
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