In a first tariff-induced hit against the PC gaming sector, ASRock is talking about increasing costs and moving its graphics card manufacturing away from China

pcgamer.com:

As part of Trump's seemingly isolationist strategy to grow the country's economy (and apparently combat fentanyl use), the US President recently introduced tariffs against China, Mexico, and Canada. Although the latter two have been delayed, tariffs against China are in force, and we're already seeing signs of potential impact in the PC gaming sector.

Motherboard and graphics card manufacturer ASRock told PCMag that it will be moving at least some of its manufacturing away from China: «As for the 10% tariff applied to other products like GPU cards, we need some time to transfer the manufacturing to other countries.»

This is just a concrete example of what we'd already been warned of by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA): that tariffs on videogame-related hardware could harm the gaming industry in the US. Whether the tariff strategy is a good move overall, politically and economically, some negative impact can't be denied.

To again get a little more concrete, ASRock also says that «in the transition period [between manufacturing in China and manufacturing elsewhere], we may absorb some of the cost and also increase some in price to reflect the increased cost.» This, despite the fact that «since the market is still highly competitive, it is not easy to raise price[s].»

This isn't likely to be an isolated issue, either. Tons of PC gaming hardware companies do some or all of their manufacturing in China. MSI, for instance, makes its motherboards in Shenzhen, China.

TSMC, too, has some production in China in addition to Taiwan, this being its Nanjing fab. However, this facility's older 16 nm and 12 nm FinFET process, once used for Nvidia 10-series cards, is now used for things not so gaming-related, such as TVs. There could be smaller things—chip controllers, for instance—still made on this node, though.

But any effects on a company's margins can have a knock-on effect. The Commercial Times reports that it's estimated that prices for TSMC's 7 nm or smaller