Summary

  • Framework faces challenges with tariffs on imports from Taiwan, China, and Malaysia.
  • Tariffs of 32% on Taiwan products, 129% on China modules, and 24% on Malaysia goods impacted pricing.
  • US government rolling back tariffs to 10% for 90 days eases pricing concerns for Framework laptops.

Did you have a stressful day today? Well, here's some solace: there's a chance that it wasn't as stressful as what the good folk over at Framework felt today. With the tariffs going crazy, the company has had to keep up with its plans on how much its laptops cost, and things are looking a little dicey. So dicey, in fact, that Framework had to stop an entire line of laptops in response to the new tariffs...only to then have to re-reconsider after some exceptions were made, including for processors.

Framework struggles to keep up with the tariffs

In a post on the Framework blog, the company breaks down why the latest tariffs have been a nightmare for its proceedings. Turns out the company imports parts from all over the world, including Taiwan, China, and Malaysia, so the tariffs would cause various price hikes across all of the components. Not only does Framework have to take into account the different tariff rates for each individual company, but such rates can change on a moment's notice, making pricing hardware particularly turbulent.

The original blog post detailed a 32% tariff on products from Taiwan (which includes "Framework Laptops, Mainboards, Framework Desktop, and a subset of modules"), a 129% tariff on "many modules" from China, and a 24% tariff on products from Malaysia (which includes Western Digital drives).

Right as Framework knew where it was standing, the US government then rolled back the tariffs to the default 10% rate for 90 days, excluding China:

With that, we’ve returned US pricing on items we manufacture in Taiwan back to their original pricing. For our lowest-priced base systems, where we’re unable to absorb the remaining 10% tariff, ordering is still paused for US customers. Many of our modules are manufactured in China, which now face higher tariffs. On these items, we are keeping elevated pricing for now to cover the tariff cost. We’ll continue to monitor this situation and update pricing if needed.

Beforehand, Framework announced that it had to remove the cheapest laptops from the store as the tariffs would make them unprofitable to sell. As such, the company still has a little bit of homework as it tries to figure out a new price for them. Until then, we'll have 90 days of peace, which should give Frameworks enough time to prepare.