AVIXA Puts Out Five Top Pro AV Considerations For Dealing With Tariff Turmoil
March 18, 2025 by Dave Haynes
The pro AV trade association AVIXA – which owns and runs the InfoComm trade shows and co-owns ISE – has a market intelligence unit that produces both free and AVIXA member-based material that looks at the state of the industry and key issues like trade. So as you might expect, the market intelligence team has had a look at tariffs and how they’re affecting the pro AV industry.
The AVIXA TV team has produced a video brief with AVIXA economist Peter Hansen that runs through the five things pro AV people should make top of mind going forward. It is intended as a teaser for a full Macroeconomic Trends Analysis (or META) report that is available free of charge to AVIXA Gold and Silver members and their employees. If that’s not the case, an annual META subscription costs roughly $1K USD.
Here’s the five things to know:
- Uncertainty reigns: New tariffs are happening quickly and they’re being postponed and altered. Add in the fact that supply chains tend to be pretty opaque and you have an environment that is very tough for companies to plan for;
- The long term issue is cost: Tariffs are taxes that ultimately someone needs to pay. If and when tariffs come into place. End-users should expect to pay more for equipment;
- Buying domestic might not be quite as good as it sounds: If you can find a domestic source which is not a guarantee in our industry, the cost might increase due to tariffs on its components. Then increased demand for domestic goods can also drive up their price;
- Global equilibrium effects: If tariffs make products like displays more expensive in the US, then producers are going to seek out more favorable markets elsewhere. This could drive supply gluts and price drops in other geographies;
- Companies have lots of levers to pull to minimize tariff exposure: Hansen suggest the report goes deep on the topic because there are so many complicated ways that companies can use to accumulate tariff savings.
Here’s the video …
Ok, I’ll explain this again: I am anti-tariff as a rule, but…
Other countries dump ANY product they want below cost into the US market (we are the most lenient in the world). As a result, we got used to buying stuff on the cheap. It’s just like buying stolen goods from a fence, like China. And they simply stole a lot of the IP and tech we created. (No R&D cost make things super cheap).
This kills domestic production because we simply become too expensive.
Now that tariffs are all the rage, we may actually have to pay cost-based prices for our stuff. We don’t like it because we have been paying so much less for that stuff from our fence, but the rest of the world has a multi-trillion dollar annual surplus with us…due in large part to tariffs on US goods going to other countries. Like 100% on US cars…
I think a reciprocal set up is exactly what we need… if a country wants to charge 100% on US goods coming in… we have the right, the responsibility, indeed the duty to our own manufacturing base, to reciprocate.
But until the playing field is level, bring them on.