How Might US-China Trade Relations Impact PCB/PCBA Pricing and Imports?
So I generally try to stay away from politics publicly, but I live in the US, and as you may have heard there was an election here. Deferring judgement on other aspects, there will likely be some effect on trade, i.e. US tariffs for goods, especially from China.
It's hard to see the pricing I can get from a Chinese PCB/PCBA manufacturer as fair (it's rather unbelievable TBH), but at the same time I really like it. I think/hope that there's some exemption for the price/quantity of goods that I normally order, so maybe that won't change directly, but if there's a general increased unhappiness between our countries maybe this will trickle down to my level imports-wise?
Hard to predict what the effects will be, but what are people's thoughts from a US and non-US perspective trade-wise? More specifically thinking about the sort of things that we do, e.g. custom PCBs/parts/etc... Maybe it's a good time to open up a PCBA fabrication operation?
(I'm trying to keep this pretty narrow politics-wise, most of that discussion is for elsewhere IMO)
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Hey @JeremyCook this is interesting and I'm glad you brought it up. I'd be interested to hear from others who live and work in nations with (what I assume will be) better relationships with China than here in the States (@Umesh Lokhande @hemalchevli @Joseph Ogbonna @Afuevu @kristof-at-embeetle)?
It's also amazing to me that it's possible for things to be so inexpensive compared to bread and milk here. You have to assume that the tariffs/import taxes will be passed on in higher product/service fees.
Let me know if you need an extra worker in the fab 🙂
For me in Nigeria I don't think that there would be much or any changes in terms of prices here. My own view there might be a little increase shipping from China to US based on some policies though
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Ha, yeah I hear Arizona has lots of raw silicon available so that might work out well 😄
I feel sanctions on china will be tougher. For one thing china relies heavily on export to keep it economy soaring. So I feel if china are sanctioned more, they will have to focus more on growing economies market around the world like they are doing. Already China's competitive price point on global product is a great leverage and we can already see how that is playing out in Europe taking their EV cars as an instance.
As for Nigeria it largely depends on our country's economy. I'm not really an economist though 😅. It's just what I think
That is interesting. Maybe you will see better prices on Chinese things there in the coming years if they try to further diversify their market away from the US.
I'm not economist either, but my understanding is that labor is quite a bit cheaper in China than the US, though perhaps it's even cheaper in (at least) parts of Africa, so I suppose that advantage is irrelevant? Obviously we're talking about a huge continent, and a rather large country in Nigeria, so the labor, trade environment must vary greatly by region?
Incidentally, I got to visit South Africa a few month ago (was going to say this summer, but was, in fact, winter). Different region than Nigeria for sure, but the wildlife there was truly amazing.
I can, for a fact, say labor is cheaper in the greater East Africa - Kenya being where it is most expensive at .
The biggest problems are industry and education.
I do not think we can drive technical industrial development with the levels of education we achieve (the average). Consumers we can be however. We are currently a very big market for cheap smartphones from China.
Hi @JeremyCook I live in India and in the past 5-years we have been absorbing lots of shocks and uncertainty from cost of manufacturing from Chinese firms (incl. shipping cost) and the cost of software/development tools from Western suppliers. As an Indian, we always prepare ourselves for policies on Chinese anti-dumping duty & western sanctions. I can write a long essay here. But long story short I agree to keep little bit in-ward focus (domestic market) and if manufacturing boosts in US then you may make it good out of your PCBA fabrication operation but if the policies are inconsistent then I worry you may end up at loosing side. I'm not sure. But all I can expect is the high-quality product (Made in USA) and if they don't keep the competitive pricing then the mood of a customer will decide outcome.
Yeah, I imagine the inconsistency is what drives business owners crazy. I mean 4 years it's that long a tenure for a "CEO" so to speak, and if you have things swinging wildly from one extreme to the other then it would be hard to manage for sure. (e.g. MORE EVs! Wait, no, more gasoline-powered cars!)
Anecdotally, I've noticed what seems to be a downward trend in my business over the last four years or so (mostly technical writing + other projects and content creation as it comes available). I think that has less to do with the government administration here and more to do with the rise of AI for writing etc. I think some of this business will be available for some time to come, especially the content that really requires some hands on work, knowledge, and/or interviewing, but many of the "lower end" tasks seem to be less plentiful.
So I've been thinking about how I can adapt. Opening up a fab shop was mostly a joke... but who really knows what the future holds, ha.
Got the joke! By the way I feel, if a profession demands more and more customization. it would be hard for AI to provide hyper-customized solutions to the problem whether it's hardware or firmware. I guess the same is with content creation. The demand for more knowledge and hands-on work means you're providing unique custom content based on experience. Let's see together in the future if AI can design our pcb --> order it from fab --> track and fix logistics & tax related issues--> solder it --> test and debug issues--> write firmware--> and so on. In fact, I'm worried about the future of AI, because humans have already sets up a lot of expections from it! ha.
That's a good point. Seems like we expect an answer to X and expect AI to just provide a solution Y. It's often not that simple though, and I've found that it seems to miss some nuance on technical details (at least based on something I asked a week or two ago about turning a stereo signal into mono). This nuance can, however, be extremely important, and if we're simply relying on it that can certainly be disastrous.
What will probably be annoying too is when engineers need time to work out these nuances, but higher ups assume that AI can do the job easily and either engineers get overworked, details get missed, or perhaps other things.
As for me, I can certainly provide some things that AI cannot (at least as of now), however, some of the stuff AI can provide (even if not as good) potentially represent lost opportunities.
Not quite the same, but consider this image of Paul Atreides (Dune) eating potato chips on a sand worm that AI generated for me the other day (for... reasons). It looks pretty cheesy, but if I wanted to promote my potato chips in such a way and had a limited budget, that artist I would have hired now isn't. Some of it is incredible, but I guess the trick is to figure out where you bring value the table as an actual human.
