Consoles are safe for now. Who knows when they will be getting that potential tariff that was hanging above their heads for months?

Reuters reports that the trade deal between the two superpowers entered „phase one.” We’re not going into details, but there were plans within the Trump administration to involve video game consoles in the next round of tariffs worth 160 billion dollars that would have come into action on December 15. Thus, aside from the Nintendo Switch and the Nintendo Switch Lite to an extent (as these are partially made in Vietnam), the PlayStation 4 Slim, the PlayStation 4 Pro, the Xbox One X, the Xbox One S, and the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition would all have seen its price increased. (Not to mention the next-gen consoles, the PlayStation 5 and the… Xbox, as it turns out the Microsoft machine’s name is different than we thought until now, giving more fuel to a weaker model’s rumours.) Now, according to the trade deal, the consoles are safe. China has also suspended the tariffs they were planning to introduce while preserving the active ones, which is fair, as the United States has also decided to follow this route.

„[The deal] is a phased achievement, and does not mean that the trade dispute is settled once and for all,” said a Reuters source in Beijing. It makes sense: there is no ink on the paper yet, and Donald Trump, the current president of the United States, also said he wants to start negotiations of the next phase immediately, and not wait until the 2020 elections are over. (Especially how impeachment could happen to him – the last time it happened to a US president, it was with Bill Clinton two decades ago.)

So CURRENTLY it seems the next-gen consoles won’t be harmed by the trade war between the two countries. However, as there’s still a year until they launch, we might see the tides turn again…

Source: WCCFTech

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