Tech
What to buy before tariffs take effect: Experts say laptops, smartphones, and even Christmas lights could soon cost more
Ah, tariffs. President Donald Trump’s signature economic policy has been on, off, on again, off again, possibly AI-generated, weirdly specific, overly broad, and on and off again. Honestly, it's been hard to track tariff rates ever since the president began his second term several years ago. (Or, at least, it feels like years.)
While the president’s tariffs have had wide-ranging effects, perhaps the most constant consequence has been a sense of uncertainty. With the president once again threatening new tariff rates on the European Union, Mexico, Canada, and many countries in Southeast Asia, consumers are bracing for impact.
You may welcome these tariffs as a necessary remedy to global trade imbalances. You may see them as a disastrous constitutional overreach. Or maybe you don’t know what to think. It’s not my place to tell you.
What I can tell you: If you need to make a big purchase — laptops, smartphones, gaming consoles, electric cars, smart home gadgets, or home appliances — we may see price increases in the months ahead.
Where could we see price increases? Here's what the experts say.
Dr. Tinglong Dai, a professor with the Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School, told Mashable that the tariff situation is extremely “dynamic.”
“A lot of tariffs we are talking about are really threats. When they actually materialize, or if they actually do, how long they are going to sustain could be super, super dynamic,” Dai said. He added, “I think if history was any indicator, you know, we have this TACO thing, right? So [the] 'Trump Always Chickens Out' thing we repeat. I think that [there's a] high chance the cycle will repeat.”
In addition to the products mentioned above, the experts we spoke to specifically warned about potential price increases on drones, wooden furniture, car parts, clothing and accessories, and even Christmas lights. However, Dai also said that potential price increases won’t be as high as the tariffs themselves, at least, not in the short term. “Even when you look at a 50-percent tariff rate, it would not have translated to a 50-percent increase in prices. Most likely, you're looking at 5 percent or 10 percent. It's unlikely to be 50 percent,” Dai said.
Worryingly, Professor Brett House with the Columbia Business School warned that consumer tech products could see average price increases of 20 percent in the short term. He added that large companies will be less vulnerable to supply chain issues, but that no tech business will be immune.
“Large tech companies have some capacity to reorganize their global production chains to dampen the impact of U.S. import taxes on their goods, but they can't avoid them entirely. As a result, the prices Americans face for these products are set to increase,” House said.
Finally, Rick Kowalski, Senior Director of Business Intelligence at the Consumer Technology Association, had a blunt warning for shoppers. He said that new tariffs on semiconductors “really could hit things like smartphones, laptops, tablets, PC monitors — which are big-ticket items.” He concluded, “Given this information, I'd say consumers may want to consider purchasing sooner than later. In a few months, your dollar may not buy you as much tech as it once did.”
The product categories to watch if you're worried about tariffs
As before, tech products manufactured in China and Southeast Asia could be hardest hit. Unfortunately, that includes countless products. And in the last wave of tariffs, we reported on tariff-related price increases at Nintendo, Microsoft, and Walmart, and on specific products like Asus laptops, Anker chargers, and Xbox games.
Smartphones
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While the newest foldable Samsung phones released in July didn't see big increases, that may not be the case for the yet-to-be-released Galaxy S26 series of phones. Trump has threatened tariffs on smartphones in particular. This product category was a big focus of his even before the announcement of Trump Mobile.
Home security products
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You may remember when the smart home brand Wyze revealed a massive $255,000 tariff bill on a single shipment from China valued at $167,000.
Drones
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One of the experts we talked to specifically mentioned drones as a consumer tech gadget that will be vulnerable to tariffs. Most of these flying machines are made overseas, and popular drone companies like DJI are based in China. Many popular DJI drones are already sold out, low in stock, or only available via third-party storefronts at retailers like Amazon.
Christmas lights
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A new car
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A lot of cars are manufactured (in part) in Canada and Mexico, which Trump has threatened with a new wave of tariffs. Because cars contain so many components manufactured all over the world, they're particularly vulnerable to tariffs and supply chain disruptions.
Video games and consoles
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Already, Microsoft has raised prices on its Xbox consoles, with tariffs as one cause. The company also plans to raise prices on its video games for the holidays, so this is one product category where we can safely say prices will go up. Nintendo has also reported tariff-related problems, so if you can find a Switch 2 in stock, don't delay.
Noise-cancelling headphones
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Anker has previously raised prices because of tariffs, and this Chinese company is likely to be affected by any additional tariffs. Many other popular headphones are also manufactured in Southeast Asia, and new headphones like the Sony XM6 landed with higher prices than the previous generation. Basically, if you're waiting for Christmas to buy new noise-cancelling headphones, you could regret it.
Mashable Senior Shopping Reporter Haley Henschel contributed additional reporting to this article.
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It seems OpenAI has been caught with its hands in the proverbial cookie jar. Anthropic has reportedly cut off OpenAI’s access to Anthropic’s APIs over what Anthropic is calling a terms of service breach.
As reported by Wired, multiple sources claim that OpenAI has been cut off from Anthropic’s APIs. Allegedly, OpenAI was using Anthropic’s Claude Code to assist in creating and testing OpenAI’s upcoming GPT-5, which is due to release in August.
According to these sources, OpenAI was plugging into Claude’s internal tools instead of using the chat interface. From there, they used the API to run tests against GPT-5 to check things like coding and creative writing against Claude to compare performance. OpenAI allegedly also tested safety prompts related to things like CSAM, self-harm, and defamation. This would give OpenAI data that it could then use to fine-tune GPT-5 to make it more competitive against Claude.
Unfortunately for OpenAI, this violates Anthropic’s commercial terms of service, which ban companies from using Anthropic’s tools to build competitor AI products.
“Customer may not and must not attempt to access the Services to build a competing product or service, including to train competing AI models or resell the Services except as expressly approved by Anthropic,” the terms read.
OpenAI responded by saying that what the company was doing was an industry standard, as all the AI companies test their models against the competing models. The company then went on to say that it respected Anthropic’s decision but expressed disappointment in having its API access shut off, especially considering that Anthropic’s access to OpenAI’s API remains open.
A spokesperson told Wired that OpenAI’s access would be reinstated for “benchmarking and safety evaluations.”
It’s not the first time this year that Anthropic has cut off API access. In June, the company cut off Windsurf’s API access after rumors that it was being sold to OpenAI. That deal ultimately fell through, but Anthropic’s cofounder, Jared Kaplan, told TechCrunch at the time that “it would be odd for us to be selling Claude to OpenAI.”
Anthropic has also tweaked its rate limits for Claude, which will take effect in late August, with one of the reasons being that a small number of users are violating the company’s policy by sharing and reselling accounts.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
It’s the end of another quarter, which means it’s time for yet another earnings call with concerning ideas for generating more revenue. This time around, it's Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who told shareholders on Thursday that there’s “significant financial opportunity” in delivering ads through Alexa+, the company’s new AI-powered voice assistant.
“I think over time, there will be opportunities, you know, as people are engaging in more multi-turn conversations to have advertising play a role — to help people find discovery and also as a lever to drive revenue,” Jassy said, per the investor call transcript.
Since launching earlier this year, Alexa+ has reportedly reached millions of users. Unlike the original Alexa, which mostly turns off lights and sets timers, Alexa+ is designed to be more conversational, context-aware, and AI-driven. It can help you plan your date night, entertain your kids, and even dabble in basic image and video generation — all under the banner of your $14.99/month Prime subscription.
But so far, Amazon Alexa has been an ad-free experience. It's also more than 10 years old, and it doesn't make money; thus, it's been deemed a "colossal failure" by those within the company.
Of course, Amazon isn’t alone in trying to figure out how to make AI pay for itself. Both Google and OpenAI have explored ad integration in their AI products as a way to generate revenue. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in particular, has made a notable pivot: once firmly against advertising in his chatbot, he’s since reversed course, possibly opening the door for ads in future versions of ChatGPT.
Whatever the motivation, injecting ads into Alexa+ would mark a major shift in both user experience and Amazon’s strategy, especially given the assistant’s long history of being expensive to maintain and hard to monetize. Ad-supported Alexa+ could be Amazon’s attempt to finally turn its once-money-burning smart assistant into a revenue machine, without hiking the subscription fee (at least for now).
Alexa+ is still new, and what an ad-supported experience would actually look like remains unclear. According to Jassy, the idea is to frame ads as helpful, something to assist customers in discovering products they might be interested in buying.
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