A retro hardware maker willing to pay Trump’s tariffs is suspending US shipments anyway

RetroTINK, a company that sells hardware for playing retro consoles on modern screens, says it will be temporarily suspending US shipments — even though the company wants to pre-pay President Donald Trump’s tariffs, as reported by Time Extension.

The company is suspending shipments “due to lack of guidance on how tariffs will be collected starting May 2nd,” RetroTINK’s Mike Chi says on Bluesky. “Without proper procedures in place, the risk of delays and lost packages is simply too high.” The company will resume shipments “as soon as we understand how to pre-pay tariffs on behalf of the customer,” he says.

In a post on its website, the company says that “we have not received guidance from the government on how US shipments will be processed.” April 23rd will be the last day to make non-expedited orders and April 28th will be the last day to make expedited orders for US-bound shipments.

Chi also says that the company expects that the situation “will be resolved eventually – but it is impossible to say when or how.”

President Donald Trump announced wide-ranging tariffs on April 2nd, and while he lowered them to 10 percent for many countries shortly after they went into effect a week later, the US currently has a 145 percent tariff in place on goods imported from China.

RetroTINK isn’t the only small business in games dealing with issues created by the tariffs. Fangamer, for example, is delaying preorders of the Pizza Tower Collector’s Edition because of “new tariffs targeting manufacturing in China that have made it impossible for us to estimate the CE’s final price.”