Newegg blames tariffs for the high cost of RTX 5090 GPUs

NVIDIA’s RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 GPUs come at a high cost on top of being difficult to acquire due to low stock, and it seems tariffs are to blame for the increased cost. That’s according to Newegg, one of the largest online retailers in the US for computers and computer hardware.

This might not be surprising. Following his victory in the recent election President Donald Trump announced he would be imposing tariffs on goods exported from China. Many technology products come from this region, and it would seem this includes some of the latest NVIDIA GPUs.

Newegg states that its RTX 50-series GPUs come from China. As such, the tariffs reportedly apply to the overall cost to the retailer, and those are being passed onto the consumer. Earlier this week MSI and ASUS both increased the prices of their RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 GPUs. Trump’s tariffs also took effect this week. And Newegg states that the higher cost is a direct result of those tariffs.

Tariffs could impact prices on RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 GPUs for the foreseeable future

Now that the higher prices are in effect, there’s not much consumers can do except wait for potential sales. At least for now. PC Mag reports that ASRock plans to shift its manufacturing plants from China to other countries like Vietnam and Taiwan.

ASRock is one of several board partners that work with NVIDIA to manufacture these GPUs. So if other vendors do the same, in time, prices could come down as the tariffs would no longer apply. The downside is that ASRock has admitted that this kind of change takes time to complete. It could be a few years before manufacturing is moved to a new country. In the meantime, the increased GPU prices are likely to stick around until all this is finished.

The silver lining for some of ASRock’s products is that the company says it might shoulder some of the cost. “We may absorb some of the cost and also increase some in price to reflect the increased cost.,” ASRock said. This is semi-good news for consumers, as there may be a chance that some of ASRock’s GPUs won’t go up in price. At the moment it doesn’t really matter since there’s none available to buy from retailers anyway.

Are retailers taking advantage?

That’s a question that will probably never be answered. Retailers like Newegg would never admit it, even if it’s true. From a consumer standpoint, however, this is what it looks like. Trump’s tariffs are a 10% tariff. Yet the price increases seem to be slightly higher than 10%. So who knows. As an alternative consumers might have better chances trying to get a 40-series GPU. Even then, prices on those cards have increased as well.

Most of these seem to be from third-party sellers through the retailers though so this might not be the same kind of situation. The end result, either way, is that GPU prices have gone up. Again. Only the last time was due to the pandemic and a shortage of components from suppliers, which was also a direct result of the pandemic. For now, anyone looking to upgrade to a new GPU may just have to bite the bullet and pay the higher price. Or see if they can wait things out. It also might be cheaper to just buy a pre-built or custom-built PC.

There’s also the possibility that getting a Founders Edition RTX 5070 or RTX 5070 Ti GPU could be cheaper.

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