Monitor makers are stockpiling panels to lessen impact of US tariffs

It’s a bad time to be in the market for… well, pretty much anything, if you’re an American. The Trump administration’s tariffs on China are driving up prices on basically all goods, but electronics are being hit especially hard. While buyers have enjoyed plunging prices on monitors for the last few years, display makers are now reportedly stockpiling to try and keep the prices from rising too high.

That’s according to a report from DigiTimes Asia (spotted by Tom’s Hardware), which says that big manufacturers like Dell, HP, and Samsung are importing 2 to 3 million units as a buffer against increasing prices. Presumably that includes panels for both monitors and laptops (which are often made by the same OEM suppliers). Even with the mitigating action, the report anticipates a general increase in prices by 5 percent and “conservative shipment targets” for the year. That’s after several years of lowering prices driven by increased competition and thinner margins.

If anything, monitor and laptop screen prices rising by just 5 percent might actually be a blessing. Initial estimates from the Consumer Technology Association put the price increases for American buyers as high as 60 to 100 percent for some goods, accounting for a worst-case scenario of escalating tariffs. Granted, Trump has a habit of making outlandish threats and then walking them back to less drastic levels. He’s already delayed his 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, though new taxes on steel and aluminum have caused more short-term chaos.

PC users are already feeling the pinch in a few places. Retailers and manufacturers are blaming the tariffs for increased prices on the latest Nvidia graphics cards (though I wouldn’t take those statements as gospel). With the low inventories for these cards, retailers could charge whatever they want in the knowledge that someone will pay big bucks for them. But ASRock has gone on the record with an intention to move some of its manufacturing out of China to try and avoid the rising costs imposed by Trump’s economic policies.

ASRock mentioned Taiwan, the world’s leading producer of semiconductors, as one potential place it could shift production. But Trump has already threatened tariffs on Taiwan as high as 100 percent (again, remember his hyperbolic tendencies). It looks like there are only two guaranteed results at the moment: higher prices for Americans, and manufacturers scrambling to try and avoid those hikes.