The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) has warned in a new report that console prices in the US could increase by as much as 69% in the US due to the tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump.
Back in January, the CTA published a report by the Trade Partnership Worldwide LLC (TPW) that looked at the potential impact of Trump’s tariffs based on his campaign progress. As the tariffs have now been imposed, the CTA has issued an updated version of the report that accesses their actual impact, and focuses on video game consoles, laptops, smartphones, and more.
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The US president imposed a 10% universal tariff on April 5, with other countries had a ‘reciprocal’ tariff announced, but many of these were paused for 90 days on April 9. China is the exception to this, which has tariffs of 145%.
The report states that consumer tech products could rise significantly in price for the US if the tariff pause ends in July and higher rates are applied as they now stand. With this in mind, it estimates that desktop PCs and smartphones may increase by 24% and 30.8%, respectively, while video game consoles could spike 69.4% .
It further added that video game console retailer prices could hit as much as $428 per unit, citing the fact 87% of console come from China. This would see consumer ‘spending power’ on consoles suffer a loss of $12 billion due to inflated price.
Back in March, Mat Piscatella of Circana warned that Trump’s tariffs could threaten the release of physical games, as both China and Mexico — both heavily affected by tariffs — are largely responsible for the production of disc-based titles. As such, the analyst suggests that publishers may look to distance themselves from physical games due to the bump of importing goods from these regions.
Both Sony and Microsoft have announced a rise for the price of their flagship hardware, with Xbox consoles seeing a global price increase while the PS5 has seen a price hike in select territories. For example, in Europe the PS5 Digital-Only Edition now costs €499, while in the UK the console now retails for £429.99.
[Source – VGC]