President Donald Trump’s tariffs on goods imported from Mexico, Canada and China are in effect, but large tech companies remain largely silent despite the potential impact that tariffs may have on businesses.
I’ve already written about this twice. Just after Trump announced them in February, and once again a week later, after the first 10% tariffs on China were enacted and the Mexico and Canada tariffs were suspended. In both articles, Verge reached out to Big Tech and many companies in the adjacent industry, with most of them either denying comment or not replying at all. The replies usually gave a generic statement.
We did another round outreach and there are some new comments, but things are pretty much the same. This is the new one:
Otherwise, the situation is similar to the last time I wrote about it, with very small changes.
However, as I wrote before, the Trump administration is confused, so the nature of tariffs can change at any time. According to politics, the Trump administration on Wednesday announced a one-month exemption for car rates imposed on Canada and Mexico on Wednesday. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutonic yesterday signaled that the administration could announce some compromise on Mexico and Canada’s tariffs today.
Until the next major product launches, these tariffs may not actually have a lasting impact on high-tech companies. Is the iPhone 17 expensive? Should we pay more for the next generation of Ray-Ban Metaglass? I don’t know yet.
Updated, March 5th: Sony Digital Imaging declined to comment.
