PlayStation prices rise as U.S. tariffs bite
Sony on Wednesday said it is bumping up the price of PlayStation 5 video game consoles by $50 in the United States due to a "challenging economic environment."
Tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump hike the cost of goods brought into the U.S., leaving companies like Japan's Sony to decide whether to pass that on to consumers.
"Similar to many global businesses, we continue to navigate a challenging economic environment," Sony Interactive Entertainment vice president of global marketing Isabelle Tomatis said in a post.
After initially being threatened with a 25 percent hike, Japan negotiated a 15 percent tariff with the Trump administration.
"As a result, we've made the difficult decision to increase the recommended retail price for PlayStation 5 consoles in the U.S."
The new price for PS5 will be $550, with a "Digital Edition" priced at $500 and a Pro version for $750, according to Tomatis.
In May, Sony warned it was considering tweaking prices in the U.S., estimating that tariffs could wind up costing the company about $680 million in the fiscal year.
American companies are feeling the crunch, too.
New York-based cosmetics giant Estee Lauder recently estimated the impact of the new tariffs at around $100 million for the 2026 financial year and plans to adjust its prices to offset the additional cost.
U.S. snack giant PepsiCo could increase prices of its soft drinks about 10 percent to mitigate effects of U.S. tariffs, particularly those on imported aluminum used to make soda cans, according to trade magazine Beverage Digest.
Meanwhile, California-based energy drink maker Monster Beverages is considering raising prices due to a "complex and dynamic customs landscape," according to chief executive Hilton Schlosberg.
The Commerce Department this week said the U.S. broadened its steel and aluminum tariffs, impacting hundreds more products that contain both metals such as child seats, tableware and heavy equipment.
Since returning to the presidency, Trump has imposed tariffs on almost all U.S. trading partners.
Though the impact of Trump's tariffs on consumer prices has been limited so far, economists warn that their full effects are yet to be seen.
Some businesses have coped by bringing forward purchases of products they expected will encounter tariffs. Others have passed on additional costs to their consumers, or absorbed a part of the fresh tariff burden.
© 2025 AFP
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yomiuri Shimbun
44 minutes ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
China Rushes to Build out Solar, and Emissions Edge Downward
TALATAN, China (AP) — High on the Tibetan plateau, Chinese government officials last month showed off what they say will be the world's largest solar farm when completed — 610 square kilometers (235 square miles), the size of the American city of Chicago. China has been installing solar panels at a blistering pace, far faster than anywhere else in the world, and the investment is starting to pay off. A study released Thursday found that the country's carbon emissions edged down 1% in the first six months of the year compared to a year earlier, extending a trend that began in March 2024. The good news is China's carbon emissions may have peaked well ahead of a government target of doing so before 2030. But China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, will need to bring them down much more sharply to play its part in slowing global climate change. For China to reach its declared goal of carbon neutrality by 2060, emissions would need to fall 3% on average over the next 35 years, said Lauri Myllyvirta, the Finland-based author of the study and lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. 'China needs to get to that 3% territory as soon as possible,' he said. China's emissions have fallen even as it uses more electricity China's emissions have fallen before during economic slowdowns. What's different this time is electricity demand is growing — up 3.7% in the first half of this year — but the increase in power from solar, wind and nuclear has easily outpaced that, according to Myllyvirta, who analyzes the most recent data in a study published on the U.K.-based Carbon Brief website. 'We're talking really for the first time about a structural declining trend in China's emissions,' he said. China installed 212 gigawatts of solar capacity in the first six months of the year, more than America's entire capacity of 178 gigawatts as of the end of 2024, the study said. Electricity from solar has overtaken hydropower in China and is poised to surpass wind this year to become the country's largest source of clean energy. Some 51 gigawatts of wind power was added from January to June. Li Shuo, the director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington, described the plateauing of China's carbon emissions as a turning point in the effort to combat climate change. 'This is a moment of global significance, offering a rare glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak climate landscape,' he wrote in an email response. It also shows that a country can cut emissions while still growing economically, he said. But Li cautioned that China's heavy reliance on coal remains a serious threat to progress on climate and said the economy needs to shift to less resource-intensive sectors. 'There's still a long road ahead,' he said. One solar farm can power 5 million households A seemingly endless expanse of solar panels stretches toward the horizon on the Tibetan plateau. White two-story buildings rise above them at regular intervals. Sheep graze on the scrubby vegetation that grows under them. Solar panels have been installed on about two-thirds of the land. When completed, it will have more than 7 million panels and be capable of generating enough power for 5 million households. Like many of China's solar and wind farms, it was built in the relatively sparsely populated west. A major challenge is getting electricity to the population centers and factories in China's east. 'The distribution of green energy resources is perfectly misaligned with the current industrial distribution of our country,' Zhang Jinming, the vice governor of Qinghai province, told journalists on a government-organized tour. Part of the solution is building transmission lines traversing the country. One connects Qinghai to Henan province. Two more are planned, including one to Guangdong province in the southeast, almost at the opposite corner of the country. Making full use of the power is hindered by the relatively inflexible way that China's electricity grid is managed, tailored to the steady output of coal plants rather than more variable and less predictable wind and solar, Myllyvirta said. 'This is an issue that the policymakers have recognized and are trying to manage, but it does require big changes to the way coal-fired power plants operate and big changes to the way the transmission network operates,' he said. 'So it's no small task.'
Asahi Shimbun
an hour ago
- Asahi Shimbun
China rushes to build out solar, and emissions edge downward
TALATAN, China--High on the Tibetan plateau, Chinese government officials last month showed off what they say will be the world's largest solar farm when completed — 610 square kilometers (235 square miles), the size of the American city of Chicago. China has been installing solar panels at a blistering pace, far faster than anywhere else in the world, and the investment is starting to pay off. A study released Thursday found that the country's carbon emissions edged down 1% in the first six months of the year compared to a year earlier, extending a trend that began in March 2024. The good news is China's carbon emissions may have peaked well ahead of a government target of doing so before 2030. But China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, will need to bring them down much more sharply to play its part in slowing global climate change. For China to reach its declared goal of carbon neutrality by 2060, emissions would need to fall 3% on average over the next 35 years, said Lauri Myllyvirta, the Finland-based author of the study and lead analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air. 'China needs to get to that 3% territory as soon as possible,' he said. China's emissions have fallen before during economic slowdowns. What's different this time is electricity demand is growing — up 3.7% in the first half of this year — but the increase in power from solar, wind and nuclear has easily outpaced that, according to Myllyvirta, who analyzes the most recent data in a study published on the U.K.-based Carbon Brief website. 'We're talking really for the first time about a structural declining trend in China's emissions,' he said. China installed 212 gigawatts of solar capacity in the first six months of the year, more than America's entire capacity of 178 gigawatts as of the end of 2024, the study said. Electricity from solar has overtaken hydropower in China and is poised to surpass wind this year to become the country's largest source of clean energy. Some 51 gigawatts of wind power was added from January to June. Li Shuo, the director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington, described the plateauing of China's carbon emissions as a turning point in the effort to combat climate change. 'This is a moment of global significance, offering a rare glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak climate landscape,' he wrote in an email response. It also shows that a country can cut emissions while still growing economically, he said. But Li cautioned that China's heavy reliance on coal remains a serious threat to progress on climate and said the economy needs to shift to less resource-intensive sectors. 'There's still a long road ahead,' he said. A seemingly endless expanse of solar panels stretches toward the horizon on the Tibetan plateau. White two-story buildings rise above them at regular intervals. Sheep graze on the scrubby vegetation that grows under them. Solar panels have been installed on about two-thirds of the land. When completed, it will have more than 7 million panels and be capable of generating enough power for 5 million households. Like many of China's solar and wind farms, it was built in the relatively sparsely populated west. A major challenge is getting electricity to the population centers and factories in China's east. 'The distribution of green energy resources is perfectly misaligned with the current industrial distribution of our country,' Zhang Jinming, the vice governor of Qinghai province, told journalists on a government-organized tour. Part of the solution is building transmission lines traversing the country. One connects Qinghai to Henan province. Two more are planned, including one to Guangdong province in the southeast, almost at the opposite corner of the country. Making full use of the power is hindered by the relatively inflexible way that China's electricity grid is managed, tailored to the steady output of coal plants rather than more variable and less predictable wind and solar, Myllyvirta said. 'This is an issue that the policymakers have recognized and are trying to manage, but it does require big changes to the way coal-fired power plants operate and big changes to the way the transmission network operates,' he said. 'So it's no small task.'
Yomiuri Shimbun
an hour ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Appeals Court Allows Trump to End Temporary Protections for Migrants from Central America and Nepal
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday sided with the Trump administration and halted for now a lower court's order that had kept in place temporary protections for 60,000 migrants from Central America and Nepal. This means that the Republican administration can move toward removing an estimated 7,000 people from Nepal whose Temporary Protected Status designations expired Aug. 5. The TPS designations and legal status of 51,000 Hondurans and 3,000 Nicaraguans are set to expire Sept. 8, at which point they will become eligible for removal. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco granted the emergency stay pending an appeal as lead plaintiff National TPS Alliance alleges that the administration acted unlawfully in ending Temporary Protected Status designations for people from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal. 'The district court's order granting plaintiffs' motion to postpone, entered July 31, 2025, is stayed pending further order of this court,' wrote the judges, who are appointees of Democrat Bill Clinton and Republicans George W. Bush and Donald Trump. Temporary Protected Status is a designation that can be granted by the Homeland Security secretary, preventing migrants from being deported and allowing them to work. The Trump administration has aggressively sought to remove the protection, thus making more people eligible for removal. It's part of a wider effort by the administration to carry out mass deportations of immigrants. Secretary Kristi Noem can extend Temporary Protected Status to immigrants in the U.S. if conditions in their homelands are deemed unsafe for return due to a natural disaster, political instability or other dangerous conditions. Immigrant rights advocates say TPS holders from Nepal have lived in the U.S. for more than a decade while people from Honduras and Nicaragua have lived in the country for 26 years, after Hurricane Mitch in 1998 devastated both countries. 'The Trump administration is systematically de-documenting immigrants who have lived lawfully in this country for decades, raising U.S.-citizen children, starting businesses, and contributing to their communities,' said Jessica Bansal, attorney at the National Day Laborer Organization, in a statement. Noem ended the programs after determining that conditions no longer warranted protections. In a sharply written July 31 order, U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson in San Francisco kept the protections in place while the case proceeds. The next hearing is Nov. 18. She said the administration ended the migrant status protections without an 'objective review of the country conditions,' such as political violence in Honduras and the impact of recent hurricanes and storms in Nicaragua. In response, Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary at DHS, said, 'TPS was never meant to be a de facto asylum system, yet that is how previous administrations have used it for decades.' The Trump administration has already terminated TPS designations for about 350,000 Venezuelans, 500,000 Haitians, more than 160,000 Ukrainians and thousands of people from Afghanistan and Cameroon. Some have pending lawsuits in federal courts. Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that Noem's decisions are unlawful because they were predetermined by President Donald Trump's campaign promises and motivated by racial animus. But Drew Ensign, a U.S. deputy assistant attorney general, said at a hearing Tuesday that the government suffers an ongoing irreparable harm from its 'inability to carry out the programs that it has determined are warranted.' Honduras Deputy Foreign Minister Gerardo Torres said Wednesday that the appellate decision was unfortunate. He said the government hopes to at least buy time for Hondurans with the temporary status so they can seek out another way to stay legally in the U.S. 'We're going to wait to see what the National TPS Alliance decides, it's possible the case could be elevated to the United States Supreme Court, but we have to wait,' he said. In May, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end TPS designations for Venezuelans. The justices provided no rationale, which is common in emergency appeals, and did not rule on the underlying claims.
