I apologize if this isn’t the right forum for this.
I’d received a quote on a new laptop by email. The sales rep told me the company honors their quotes for 14 days.
But due to the tariff, my quote was cancelled after two days. The price went up several hundred dollars.
I wouldn’t have thought the tariff would affect prices on their existing inventory. Also, the tariff is only 10% – yet all their prices have increased a lot more than that.
I am not a happy customer. 
I work in the semiconductor industry. It’s causing issues with our supply chain.
I doubt we’ll be getting profit sharing this year for the first time in over a decade.
I can’t speak for your specific laptop provider, but often laptops are more or less slapped together to order. Especially if it’s customized in anyway. Just-in-time shipping and other economies of NOT having huge warehouses full of product lying around to keep costs down have made it so.
As for the total increase, it doesn’t surprise me, along with @Grrr’s mentions, because China has also slapped caps on various minerals used in many high-tech components including chips:
So, consider the 10% US-side tariff just the aperitif on price increases.
I didn’t think Trump was kidding, so I got my electronics (new laptop, extra ram, additional storage) between Black Friday Sales and through the end of December. I was hoping I’d be wrong, and technically, I was, since I expected the final tariff to be higher - but I see no “wins” for the consumers as China has far less need to place nice with Trump than Mexico or Canada.
Thanks, ParallelLines. It would’ve been nice if the company had given consumers notice. I never expected such a dramatic increase.
Tariffs will generally affect existing inventory. When pricing any item, the question the merchant asks himself is “what will it cost me to restock this item?” If the restock is an import which will attract a tariff, that’ll be reflected in the price he charges for the item he is now selling.
That makes sense. Last year, I’d asked AI when the tariffs
would affect electronics product prices, and the response was that it wouldn’t be immediate; it would take manufacturers a few months to sell off their existing inventories. Too bad I trusted that.
I think I’m spotting the flaw in your methodology…
The consumer friendly answer is “after current stocks are exhausted”. The business friendly answer is “before they take affect but after consumers know they’re imminent.” The truth is somewhere in the middle and depends on how the business’s competitors react. But the bottom line is “as soon and as much as they can get away with without ceding too much sales to other competitors willing to be more patient / lenient”.
Remember that all their costs, including but not only tariffs, place a weak lower bound on their normal (IOW not loss leader) pricing. The only thing that places any upper bound on pricing is the customer’s willingness to pay them instead of somebody else or doing without.
Thank you, LSLGuy. That makes a lot of sense.
Not that I know of.