Good news: The Biden administration will not impose tariffs on graphics cards and motherboards imported from China for another year.

Last week, the US Trade Representative (USTR) indicated to PCMag that it would maintain Trump-era tariffs on the PC components, which led us to misinterpret a federal document announcing the tariff action. A closer reading of the notice shows that the Biden administration will actually exclude GPUs and motherboards from the tariffs for another year, until May 31, 2025.

"The US Trade Representative has found that extending these exclusions will support efforts to shift sourcing out of China, or provide additional time where, despite efforts to source products from alternative sources, availability of the product outside of China remains limited,” it says.

PCMag learned of the tariff exclusion from motherboard vendor ASRock. "Since we are a company selling PC motherboards and graphics cards, we’ve been watching the new policy closely,” the company said in an email. “What we knew from the released document and also the forwarder we worked with is that the graphics cards are excluded from the extra tariffs till 2025/5/31.”

Reading federal notices on tariff actions can be tricky since they don't mention graphics cards, motherboards, or PC desktops cases specifically. Instead, the US classifies the products using the tariff codes 8473.30.1180 and 8473.30.5100, which define them as “printed circuit assemblies” and parts and accessories for automatic data-processing machines.

On Thursday, a spokesperson for USTR clarified that "while the two tariff codes you reference are currently subject to the 301 duties, there are certain products under those codes that benefit from exclusions. It is not all products under the entire 10-digit codes."

In other words, it seems like both 8473.30.1180 and 8473.30.5100 encompass a large variety of imported products from China. Technically, USTR is keeping the tariffs in place — but implementing a one-year exclusion to certain imports under the two codes.

This is reflected in the agency’s federal notice from Friday, which breaks down the specific products under 8473.30.1180 and 8473.30.5100 that'll be excluded from the tariffs. Importantly, the document mentions that "printed circuit assemblies for rendering images onto computer screens ('graphics processing modules')," along with "printed circuit assemblies, constituting unfinished logic boards" will receive a one-year exemption.

"You are correct that the FRN (Federal Register Notice) posted on Friday extends the four product specific exclusions we have under those codes," the USTR spokesperson added.

The exclusions are a win for consumers and PC vendors. In late 2021, Nvidia, HP, and Zotac urged the US to exclude their products from the Trump-era tariffs, citing the lack of electronics manufacturing outside of China. In 2022, the Biden administration lifted the tariffs on GPUs and motherboards, but only through a temporary exclusion process, which USTR elected to maintain.

Other products, including air fryers, certain color video cameras, and select bicycle models, will not be excluded from the Trump-era tariffs. Separately, the Biden administration also decided to hike import fees on Chinese steel and aluminum, semiconductors, electric vehicles, EV batteries, and solar panels.

By: DocMemory
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