Seasonic USA MSRP UPDATE for 2018

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
Joined
May 18, 1997
Messages
55,534
Sea Sonic has sent over a Press Release this morning that looks to be a result of tariffs recently put in place by our government. Sea Sonic's MSRP increases represent ~8% on it highest end models, and a whopping ~33% increase at the bottom of its product stack.


Azusa, CA – November 5, 2018
Effective 01 December 2018, Sea Sonic USA is to increase the MSRP for all power supplies manufactured in China and destined for the US market. This is the result of recent market developments, but all orders placed prior to this date shall follow current pricing.
Sea Sonic strives to be transparent and forthright with its partners and consumers. We thank you in advance for your understanding as our priority is to continue providing cost-effective solutions to all our customers. The situation is dynamic and necessary adjustments will be made accordingly.
We greatly appreciate your support and look forward to continuing our partnership well into the future. If you have any questions, please contact your Sea Sonic representative or visit our website at www.seasonic.com.
Sincerely,
Vincent Chang
Chairman & CEO, Sea Sonic
 
33% isn't a small increase. What they hell are Seasonic thinking?
I would imagine that the tariff impact is being moved around differently across different models so as to not impact the lower volume high-end products in such a big way if they just assigned a 25% increase per model.
 
Just means if you were planning a system with one of their products I wouldn't hold out til the Dec 1st deadline as the adjustments at e-tailors may not wait til then for the increase if they plan on passing it on.
 
33% isn't a small increase. What they hell are Seasonic thinking?

That they are going to pass along their costs to the customer like every other (successful) business ever?

Economic experts warned us from the beginning that these tariffs would not work the way they were being portrayed. This is a prime example. Tariffs should be used when there is an equivalent industry in the US that competes with the imports (to prevent the American market from being overrun by inferior, cheaper goods). Since there isn't any American made competition for PSUs, the tariffs gets passed along to the customer.
 
We've been getting f***ed by Chinese unfair trade practices and industrial policies for a very, very long time. Yeah, it's a bitter pill, but we survived the 2011 Thailand floods and the prices of hard drives, as well as other price increases. And I can live with 8% increases (33% is for the lower end models, so unless you can't afford a decent power supply to begin with, then no worries.) Just more FUD put out by the Chinese to panic short sighted folks.
 
Give me a tested option that I have trust in and when I need/want it I will pay. I'm over wasting time complaining when just getting what I feel is the right tool for the job and moving on to enjoying the end product.
 
That seems like a realistic, long term price curve over their product line. (Especially compared to what some other industries have been touting.) And as is the sentiment around here, worth.
 
I've been warning my customers that come January and the big tariff hits, I will have no choice but to start jacking $$$ up. Seems a lot of people just crawled out from under their rocks and found out about the tariffs.
 
I have no problem with price increases because of tariffs, especially on quality hardware. My first time coming to HardOCP was a seasonic review.

Always play the long game, leave the short game worries to the cable news purveyors and day traders.
 
So how does increasing the price Americans pay for literally everything make america great again????? I get it, people want american made shit but you can't beat Seasonic with a stateside company so all you're doing is making my hobby more expensive and making businesses here pass on their import cost to their customers creating a infinite cycle of fuck the consumer.
 
So how does increasing the price Americans pay for literally everything make america great again????? I get it, people want american made shit but you can't beat Seasonic with a stateside company so all you're doing is making my hobby more expensive and making businesses here pass on their import cost to their customers creating a infinite cycle of fuck the consumer.

I rather agree with you.

The long-sighted theory is that it makes domestic manufacturing competitive again. In practice, I don't know if that's going to turn out to be universally true across all markets.

It wouldn't be overnight that a new domestic PSU manufacturing facility would just spring up. And even if it magically pulled a Tesla and started cranking out PSUs in tents to get moving faster, you still have a long way to go to make it competitive versus Asian labor rates. Also, your not just competing against a PSU manufacturing facility, you have to consider the entire infrastructure - who's supply the capacitors, the silicon, the sheet metal, the fans, etc. All of that has to line up to make a competitive product.

So I'm picking on PSUs here, but it could honestly be anything. There isn't much in this world that can be created or manufactured in a vacuum without interaction with something else that requires manufacture as well. Tariffs have long-reaching effects up and down a supply chain. I think they can be extremely effective if well thought out and targeted. But if you just blanket start shooting your tariff load all over everything willy-nilly, all you have done is made a big mess.
 
We've been getting f***ed by Chinese unfair trade practices and industrial policies for a very, very long time. Yeah, it's a bitter pill, but we survived the 2011 Thailand floods and the prices of hard drives, as well as other price increases. And I can live with 8% increases (33% is for the lower end models, so unless you can't afford a decent power supply to begin with, then no worries.) Just more FUD put out by the Chinese to panic short sighted folks.

Seasonic is a Taiwanese company I think, so its more FUD put out by the Taiwanese to panic short sighed folks?
 
So how does increasing the price Americans pay for literally everything make america great again????? I get it, people want american made shit but you can't beat Seasonic with a stateside company so all you're doing is making my hobby more expensive and making businesses here pass on their import cost to their customers creating a infinite cycle of fuck the consumer.


Well, they didn't specifically target your hobby. The tariffs target a wide range of categories that PSUs just happen to fall under.

A lot of people seem to think these tariffs are to get domestic manufacturing back. It's not just about that. A large portion is to get China to put policies in place that they'll honor about not stealing IP and participating in a fair market.

US companies can (if they're willing to heavily automate) manufacturer competitively against China in many areas where the raw materials are available stateside. Where they get hurt is trying to compete with non-domestic materials. China has such control over their industries that they can play unfair by dropping the costs and use subsidies to kill any foreign competitors before fixing the costs again. It's the same thing OPEC does with oil.

Take the drone industry for example. Any company that isn't Chinese which has tried to compete with DJI has been killed off or maimed. Their playbook is obvious, they wait until you announce your product and then suddenly have a product with the same feature set available announced a week later at a huge price reduction. They essentially just shotgunned your sails so that you can't catch any wind.
 
Seasonic is a Taiwanese company I think, so its more FUD put out by the Taiwanese to panic short sighed folks?

HQ may be in Taiwan, but pretty sure their factory is in DongGuan, China. It's even on their website.

https://seasonic.com/about-us
Sea Sonic is a truly global company. Headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, we export our products from our factory in China to our offices in the USA, Europe, Japan, as well as to other parts of the world.
 
We've been getting f***ed by Chinese unfair trade practices and industrial policies for a very, very long time. Yeah, it's a bitter pill, but we survived the 2011 Thailand floods and the prices of hard drives, as well as other price increases. And I can live with 8% increases (33% is for the lower end models, so unless you can't afford a decent power supply to begin with, then no worries.) Just more FUD put out by the Chinese to panic short sighted folks.
Not sure how this tariff deal helps America if Americans are playing for it.
 
Kyle, has there been any word on how GPU's will be affected by the tariffs?
 
Economic experts warned us from the beginning that these tariffs would not work the way they were being portrayed. This is a prime example. Tariffs should be used when there is an equivalent industry in the US that competes with the imports (to prevent the American market from being overrun by inferior, cheaper goods). Since there isn't any American made competition for PSUs, the tariffs gets passed along to the customer.
Yeah. even with power supplies, it could be the supplies that is used to make the thing, that is causing the issue. ie: steel, how about gloves for the workers in the factory, the metal bits used to cut the steel, etc.. all that adds up and causes the price increase itself.

We've been getting f***ed by Chinese unfair trade practices and industrial policies for a very, very long time. Yeah, it's a bitter pill, but we survived the 2011 Thailand floods and the prices of hard drives, as well as other price increases. And I can live with 8% increases (33% is for the lower end models, so unless you can't afford a decent power supply to begin with, then no worries.) Just more FUD put out by the Chinese to panic short sighted folks.
the problem with this is it was just small or very limited in product range. These tariffs covers a whole lot more. I work at a supply house for alot of plants/factories/companies in the country, and it affects practically everything. so All americans will be paying more for a lot of stuff. wouldnt surprise me if it ends up effecting half or more of products sold... because even if the product is a USA company, and made in the usa, guaranteed their production cost went up because of the supplies they used to run and make the product in the factory.

I have no problem with price increases because of tariffs, especially on quality hardware. My first time coming to HardOCP was a seasonic review.
Always play the long game, leave the short game worries to the cable news purveyors and day traders.

its culmination of all the price increase over the last 5 years that is making this harder pill to swallow. often times i see prices from 3 years+ years, and across the industrial field, and its probably averages 10% or more

Not sure how this tariff deal helps America if Americans are playing for it.
Probably most people just only see themselves as the end customer, not the whole chain from top to bottom and all the areas the tariffs affects, manufacturing resources, running a plant resources, to packaging and shipping to consumer.


here is one way these tariffs have hurt:

From a Distributor that makes sealent like Silicone this is one way it affects them. They were supplying an american car manufacture factory in europe. The Sealant Company spent one million plus testing and verifying that this sealant was what the car manufactured wanted. well after these tariffs, the car manu said because the sealant was made in china, cant use. Now the sealant has to go spend another million + dollars verifying and certifying their sealant for the car company. Who do you think in the end is going to pay for all this craziness? Not the corporations, the consumers in the end.
we are a global economy and global trade on many levels.

also i remember telling my regional boss that the bad thing about these tariffs, is it seems like anytime there is a tax/tariff/price increase, the prices never seem to go back down to where they were before hand if done away. meaning: if they increase 25%, then the reason it happened is gone, they go back 20% leaving in the end a permanent 5%.

In the end, its not just the end product that is troubled by tariffs. Its the multiple little things behind the scenes of all products that nobody sees that really hurts.
 
Last edited:
Economic experts warned us from the beginning that these tariffs would not work the way they were being portrayed. This is a prime example. Tariffs should be used when there is an equivalent industry in the US that competes with the imports (to prevent the American market from being overrun by inferior, cheaper goods). Since there isn't any American made competition for PSUs, the tariffs gets passed along to the customer.

Hard to have an american equivalent competition when the foreign market can charge less due to artificially deflated currency value....
 
Hard to have an american equivalent competition when the foreign market can charge less due to artificially deflated currency value....

Dont have to pay workers as much, dont have to have all the regulations, dont have to pay insurance, high taxes. there is quite a few reasons why some countries can simply produce stuff at cheaper cost and bring it back to the states cheaper then fully made here.
 
So Americans lose jobs AND pay more for goods and services. Nice.
 
Or we can build high quality power supplies HERE.

But I got my 850W Prime Titanium a couple of days ago, so I'm set for the next 12 years.
 
I will probably still buy a Seasonic when needed. But I also would like to get my hands on a Super Flower unit.
 
Keep Calm 2.png
 
running a seasonic 750w <3
I am running a G-650 myself, love it (even though I am likely not coming close to actually needing a 650 class, probably could have gotten away with a 500-600 watt max seeing as I do not have the income to go all out top of the line build anyways ^.^ )

sad they will do 33% for the "low end", but, it might also be a balancing act to try to get the things sorted out because Seasonic typically has a much longer warranty period than many others (backs it up RMA wise better than most as well) AND has quality of the product backing it.

example $50 PSU becomes 66.5 ~73+tax CAD is a bt harder to swallow, but not unreasonable, where if you applied this same 33% logic to a "top model" say a platinum (not sure price) so just throw example out there 300 becomes 399 (Cad wise that would be approaching ~550 level after tax and such) which is very hard pill to swallow, better to take a hit and make sale than overprice and never be sold (unless folks got $$$$$$$ to throw around)

if they are doing their "best" to balance cost to consumer/keep their margins where they need them to be (because of tariff) it sucks, but likely makes more sense to take a "small hit" on the higher end stuff than it does to take a much larger hit on something that is almost borderline profit to keep on the shelf at the costs they currently are in the first place.

sucks, but it does make sense in my mind....stupid tariffs at least up here we already pay extra 9/10 "canada tax" then also have to pay additional taxes on top of this, makes "good deals" hard to come by these days, prices go up and up and yet income does not T_T
 
I can't really blame them at all for passing on the cost. However between the iffy voltage regulation on my 750 gold model and the 8 months plus a PITA phone call it took to finally get my rebate for 1/4 of the cost I'm planning to go back to a Super Flower manufactured EVGA PSU next time.
 
Back
Top