Radeon RX 6000 Series GPUs Already In Short Supply Hit With Price Hike Due To China Tariff
Slowly but surely, it is becoming the absolute worst time to buy computer components as a new tariff that went into effect earlier this year is starting to trickle down to retailers. Customers in the market for PC components such as GPUs, motherboards and more, are beginning to see price hikes in stores and online, while these components were already in short supply.
In 2018, President Donald Trump levied tariffs on billions of dollars' worth of Chinese products; however, these were put off until 2020. People expected that an extension would be granted for the tariffs, but that did not happen, so now PC component manufacturers face extra taxes anywhere from 7.5% to 25% at the high end. These extra incurred charges from just creating a product are now beginning to go down to the consumer. Redditor /u/ampsby took a picture at a local Microcenter and reported that the AMD Radeon 6800 and 6800 XT cost $839 and $899 now, respectively. If you are wondering, that the regular MSRP for those cards comes in at $579 and $649 respectively.
This is not a problem that is exclusive to AMD, either. Manufactures such as ASUS, EVGA, and many others have been forced to increase GPU prices to keep up with the extra taxes. EVGA does get a nod of approval for how they are handling things, though. EVGA created a reservation queue system for people ordering components so the chaos could be managed. In a post to the company's website, for people who are "currently in the EVGA.com Notify Queue system or Step-Up Queue, EVGA will honor the original MSRP pricing through April 16th, 2021 if your purchase position is processed before this date." That seems to be a pretty good way about handling the tax increase, but it is only useful if you are processed before that April 16th cutoff.
Whatever ends up happening, perhaps the PC components drought will end soon enough and we hope that prices will fall at some point in the near future. It is unclear if President-Elect Joe Biden will review or revoke some of the Chinese tariffs, but one can only hope for the best. Besides all the scalpers, have you seen computer component prices go up recently? If so, let us know in the comments below and sound off about the situation.
