Blackmagic ‘postponed’ Texas factory due to tariffs →

Jess Weatherbed, writing for The Verge:

“We were planning to build a new factory in Dallas, Texas, to streamline our supply chain and allow us to work more directly with US semiconductor companies,” Blackmagic Design spokesperson Patrick Hussey told The Verge. The introduction and ever-shifting confusion around President Donald Trump’s blanket global tariffs have since complicated things according to Hussey, because while the semiconductor parts and PCBs used in Blackmagic’s cameras are sourced from US companies, those companies are importing them from overseas.

“If we proceed with the US factory, we’d incur tariffs on those parts, increasing costs and negating the savings we anticipated,” said Hussey.

It’s a no-win situation that many other businesses in and outside of the US are facing if they deal with global suppliers. While Trump has brazenly declared that tariffs will incentivize companies to bring manufacturing to the US to remain competitive, if these manufacturers use foreign equipment or materials in their supply chain, they may — directly or indirectly — still get hit with hefty import fees. (That’s leaving aside the cost of doing business when the fees change dramatically from day to day.)

I somehow let this story pass me by in mid-April. Trump is such an idiot that not only is he destroying the economy and hiking prices in the short term, but long term is actually scaring away the manufacturing that he sought to bring to the U.S. There are no words to accurately explain how insane this all is.