Tariff turmoil: Trump’s trade policy sparks uncertainty at NAB and increases focus on software adoption

NAB 2025: Attendees in the South Hall

At this year’s NAB Show, the impact of US tariffs loomed large over discussions on the exhibition floor. With President Donald Trump’s so-called ‘Liberation Day’ list of tariffs revealed to the world just a couple of days before NAB opened its doors, the topic of trade policies and the impact on suppliers of technology to the media industry was a key part of many conversations.

A baseline 10% tariff on all goods imported to the US was set to take effect on April 5, followed by further, higher tariffs on a long list of named countries a few days later. Since then, various adjustments have followed, with some tariffs paused by the end of the show and Trump this week saying that his administration would lower the 145% tariff on goods imported to the US from China.

And it was a combination of rapidly changing policies, unclear implementation guidelines, and unpredictable enforcement that created what many NAB attendees described as a state of “limbo”, with more questions than answers.

“Swallowing the tariffs would impact already-precarious vendor profitability which isn’t good for the longer-term health of the industry”

A senior manager at one manufacturer, who asked not to be named, told SVG Europe: “It will impact on sales to the US, but we’ve not started to adjust pricing yet. It’s something we could do, but I think like a lot of other people we’re waiting to find out what happens.”

Co-founder of Caretta Research Rob Ambrose said that on the NAB show floor there was a mix of reactions.

“While many were expecting the tariffs to change again before they really impact – as indeed, they partly did on the final day of the show- some vendors (including hardware-focused ones) were refusing to talk about it, while some were talking about increasing product assembly within the US.”

For example, Canada-based Evertz plans to expand operations at its US manufacturing facility in Indiana, Pennsylviania.

“We’d already been investing in manufacturing there,” Mo Goyal, senior director, international business development/live media production, Evertz told SVG. “We’re now expediting that investment to address some of the tariff concerns that our US customers have. We are not building from scratch; instead, we’re expanding that facility to bring in some local workers, adding to the team there, producing equipment there for local broadcast customers in the U.S.”

Ambrose said the most common comment was ‘it won’t affect our customers’, implying that vendors would absorb the impact of any tariffs.

“While many media tech hardware products have high margins, swallowing the tariffs would impact already-precarious vendor profitability which isn’t good for the longer-term health of the industry,” he said.

For some companies based outside the US, the impact is already quantifiable. One manufacturer manufacturing in the UK and Japan noted, “It has affected our general price list by around 20% for US customers, as of last Thursday (the week prior to NAB)”.

Others acted further ahead of time, with Israel-based Waves increasing prices on hardware over 10% in February, in line with what the tariff increases were expected to be.

SmallHD and Teradek announced price increases before NAB began, explaining that “although our products are designed and assembled in America, the increased import tariffs still heavily impact our supply chain.”

Another manufacturer said: “It will impact on sales to the US, but we’ve not started to adjust pricing yet. It’s something we could do, but I think like a lot of other people we’re waiting to find out what happens.”

Futuresource Consulting lead market analyst, professional video and broadcast Joyce Wang said that many companies have adopted a “wait-and-see” tactic as Trump’s tariff policies are changing frequently.

She said: “As of now, Trump has paused higher trade tariffs for 90 days for most countries, excluding China. To prepare for the impact of the tariffs, some companies are diversifying their supply chains by planning to open new factories in different countries or shifting production locations depending on the tariffs. Some hardware manufacturers are also considering a price hike for US end-users.”

Blackmagic Design was the first camera manufacturer to increase prices on products sold in the US, but, as the company explained, shifting manufacturing to the US to avoid tariffs on goods sold to US-based companies is not entirely straightforward because the cost of parts imported from overseas incur their own tariffs.

A chart created by Caretta Research which asserts that although it’s still a big slice for several key vendors, only a relatively small proportion of the overall market value is hardware sold in the US. More here.

And it is proprietary hardware devices, such as cameras, switchers, routers and infrastructure products, that are among the products expected to be affected more than others.

Said Ambrose: “Many of these are made outside the US in places like Canada and China that are potentially most exposed to the tariffs. So far software, services and cloud are unaffected, though there’s always the risk of retaliatory tariffs against the US hyperscalers and digital services businesses which dominate global markets.”

Read more NAB 2025 in Review: Broadcast Audio Faces a Future of Tariff-Induced Higher Costs

Meanwhile, some manufacturers are considering creative workarounds by, for example, adjusting products to meet different tax classifications and exploring alternative pricing options for hardware and software.

A hardware vendor explained to SVG Europe: “The tariffs are on the hardware, but this piece of hardware will do absolutely nothing without my software. So how do we manage the cost of those things in the most appropriate way?

“We haven’t made any decisions about what we’re doing, and we’re tracking very closely, but we can tweak our pricing; all of a sudden, this software component might cost 50 times more…we can play with the rules a bit if we wanted to, but at the moment we’re not doing anything. We’ll just see what happens when our products cross the border.”

Software adoption

As to the longer-term impact of the tariffs, parallels could be drawn with other disruptive global events that accelerated technological shifts such as the 2011 tsunami in Japan, which disrupted tape manufacturing and hastened the move to file-based delivery, or the Covid-19 pandemic, which fuelled the rise of remote production.

“We’ve already been tracking a shift in buyers’ preferences away from proprietary single-purpose hardware devices towards software-defined workflows running on standard COTS servers or in the cloud,” said Ambrose.

“Along with NAB Show buzz around initiatives like the EBU’s Dynamic Media Facility and MXL, I think the tariffs (and even the threat of tariffs in future) will accelerate this trend. Putting it bluntly, any manufacturers that are still over-relying on proprietary hardware devices are increasingly at risk of being out of step with the market. The spectre of tariffs has brought forward the point by which nearly every step of the content supply chain downstream of the camera is running in software on commodity hardware or cloud.

“We’re already seeing high growth in the market for software- and cloud-based live production, and tariffs on the kit in already-expensive OB trucks will drive the adoption of software-based production in higher-tier, more premium sports and events.”

Wang agreed, noting that amidst the tariff turmoil, “there might be growing opportunities for cloud and software solutions, especially because there are no effective tariffs on this sector at the moment. Technology vendors that focus on pure software or cloud solutions are more shielded from the tariff impacts than hardware manufacturers.”

However, she added that this transition isn’t entirely immune. “Although cloud and pure software products are not directly affected by tariffs, they could still be influenced by the increased cost of IT equipment or infrastructure.”

And purchasing decisions from broadcasters and facility builders may soon reflect this new reality. “Technology buyers are already turning away from expensive, proprietary hardware products that only do one thing,” said Ambrose. “If the tariffs persist, it will accelerate initiatives like the centralisation and virtualisation of news production and playout used by station-owning groups.”