Adafruit Industries – an electronics hardware company – recently recently shared with its customers why it is hiking its prices after sharing its latest bill that included a $36,126.46 tariff charge. The company shared on its blogpost (quoted by USA Today), that while its tariff bills have ramped up over the last two months it only recently received its first ‘big bill’.
It explained that these products were booked and manufactured many months ago, before the US President Donald Trump’s 145% tariff on China was set. The New York based company further added that it will have to pay these tariff taxes before selling any of the products, which will have big impact on its cash flow.
“Since they are electronics products/components, there’s a chance we may be able to request reclassification on some items to avoid the 125% ‘reciprocal’ tariff, but there’s no assurance that it will succeed, and even if it does, it is many, many months until we could see a refund.” the company wrote in its blogpost.
“We’ll have to increase the prices on some of these products, but we’re not sure if people will be willing to pay the higher cost, so we may well be ‘stuck’ with unsellable inventory that we have already paid a large fee on.” it further added.
Trump considering lowering tariffs on China:
US President Donald Trump on Friday hinted in a Truth Social post at the possibility of reducing tariffs on China from the current 145% to 80% but said that the decision is up to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
In another post Trump wrote, “CHINA SHOULD OPEN UP ITS MARKET TO USA — WOULD BE SO GOOD FOR THEM!!! CLOSED MARKETS DON’T WORK ANYMORE!!!”
The US President had recently also finalized a trade agreement with UK, marking the first of several tariff-lowering deals that Trump plans to finalize in the coming days.