NVIDIA's AIB partners are now said to be "frontrunning" Trump tariffs by accelerating GPU production to get as many units into the US before the July 9th deadline set by the administration.
Gigabyte & MSI Are Now Stockpiling NVIDIA's RTX 5090 Before The Tariff Deadline, To Deal With Uncertainty & Drive Up Margins
There's no doubt that the recent round of tariffs by the US government has brought uncertainty in the supply chain, since the policies are in constant revision given how negotiations unfold. In light of that, manufacturers are trying to squeeze in extra profits by leveraging the "temporary ease" in tariff policies by the Trump administration, and interestingly, GPU manufacturers are involved in this as well. A report by Nikkei Asia revealed that firms like Gigabyte and MSI are reportedly scaling up the production of NVIDIA's flagship GPUs, to be safeguarded in case Trump's tariff on China sees another new high.
MSI's chairman, Joseph Hsu, revealed that the company has been building up inventory in the US after the recent relaxation of tariffs by President Trump, claiming that MSI is doing whatever it can in order to fulfill market demand. Similarly, Gigabyte is also rumored to have been pushing production, showing that there is an ongoing race between NVIDIA's AIB partners, and all of them are working on maintaining profit margins and capitalizing on the small window they have before the tariffs get cranked up to their original levels. Now, the bigger question is whether this would help gamers at all?
Well, companies are fond of leveraging desperate times in order to increase profit margins, and in the case of AIBs, well, they would likely wait for the July 9th deadline to pass before releasing market inventory. This would allow them to bump up prices in case a trade agreement isn't reached, and then ultimately, drive up the prices. The situation is similar to what we saw before the Trump administration took office in January, where firms like NVIDIA/AMD were said to be importing GPU units at an unprecedented rate.
It would be interesting to see whether GPUs like the RTX 5090 will see better avaliability moving into the future, and we really hope that the best turns out, especially for the average consumer who has been dragged into geopolitical tensions.
About the author: Muhammad Zuhair is a hardware and technology reporter for Wccftech, specializing in the semiconductor industry and the complex interplay between technology, manufacturing, and geopolitics. His coverage focuses on the corporate strategies and technological roadmaps of industry giants like TSMC, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Intel. Zuhair's expertise lies in deconstructing complex topics such as fabrication nodes (e.g., 2nm process), the economic impact of policies like the CHIPS Act, and the strategic development of AI infrastructure from NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.
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