When DHL delivered mail to Adafruit Industries last week, it wasn’t a typical invoice but a gut punch: a $36,126.46 customs duty bill that had to be paid within seven days.
The bill comes from Trump’s multi-layered tariffs that can stack up to 170% on certain electronics components. For Adafruit, a company that supplies makers and engineers with specialized electronic parts, this creates a perfect storm.
These components were ordered months ago before tariff changes, can’t be sourced elsewhere due to intellectual property restrictions, and must be paid for immediately — not after sales are made.
Honestly, I gotta take my licks at the moment, since it looks like the US is relenting particularly with China.
So yeah, it’s a couple months of pain for a slightly better(?) tariff deal, but that’s not transformative. It isn’t going to work like the 1800s to actually build a whole infrastructure.
If things were done like back then, it would hurt in the short and long term but the US would come out stronger for it. Instead it was just some volatility and some mild trade concessions.