United States lift Chinese import tariffs on graphics processing units and motherboards.

The US Trade Representative's Office has returned 352 products to its exclusion list, which oversees Chinese imports subject to additional, punitive tariffs as part of the trade dispute between the US and China. 

The amended list now eliminates Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) from the additional charges. PCBs are used in the production of motherboards, GPUs, and a variety of other electrical components reports Toms hardware; The development implies that PCBs from China are no longer subject to the 7.5 percent to 25 percent extra import tariffs that were imposed on them after the rules exempting these items expired in January 2021. In principle, this may result in cheaper pricing for some of the top motherboards and graphics cards. Of course, it is the best-case scenario, which implies corporations would pass on the savings to customers.  However, motherboards are more prone to fail than graphics cards. Almost all semiconductor goods are facing increased material costs as a result of the (still normalizing) supply shock caused by the COVID-19 epidemic, as well as the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. While this is true for motherboards, demand for these goods did not skyrocket in the same way as it did for graphics cards, which were also targeted by scalpers and cryptocurrency miners. Finally, lower import tariffs may result in cheaper motherboards, or at the very least, help offset higher material prices.

Graphics cards, on the other hand, are a different beast. Even though GPU costs continue to decrease towards MSRP, that specific sector has been decimated by demand shock since the debut of Nvidia's RTX 3000-series. While declining prices signal a gradual return to supply and stock normality, shops have stocked up on items that have already been marked up. This might dampen the impact of tariff exemptions on end-user pricing, since merchants will be attempting to shift graphics cards obtained at high and low costs at the same time. Retailers are thus likely to enhance their margins on more recent, lower-cost supplies to compensate for the lower profits on GPUs they previously purchased at a substantial mark-up but are unable to move owing to plummeting customer demand for graphics cards at inflated pricing. The final argument is that the implications on graphics card pricing are more difficult to anticipate - although decreased taxes are unlikely to convert into matching price action very soon.