The last few weeks have been a rollercoaster of “will they or won’t they”
speculation about the application of US tariffs on electronics. While the
industry may be safe for the moment, the President has stated
that any
exemptions will be
short-lived.
For an industry that relies upon materials and components manufactured,
assembled and distributed across a global supply chain, the pending tariffs add
significant pressure to nearshore industry supplier
networks.
Is domestic
manufacturing
even possible for electronics?
Currently, the US industrial ecosystem does not contain the infrastructure
necessary to meet the demands for consumer, commercial and high-performance
products containing electronics. But an unintended byproduct of tariffs could be
an increase in industry circularity and the associated recycling of materials
and components to enable domestic electronics manufacturing.
Just as we saw when faced with sourcing uncertainty and pricing
volatility
during the pandemic, the electronics ecosystem has an opportunity to embrace
circularity
to reduce risk and stabilize costs — and potentially minimize its environmental
and social impacts in the process.
Scaling recycling and repurposing of electronics components to recover
critical materials could allow the US electronics industry to reduce reliance on
foreign supply chains. In practice, rather than discarding materials, components
or final products at the end of their use, they would be recycled,
remanufactured, recovered or
repaired
— which would provide the feedstocks necessary to power domestic electronics
manufacturing in the US.
Will tariffs inadvertently fast track sustainable electronics manufacturing?
At the recent peak of the US Administration’s tariff talks, potential price
hikes
were projected to curb consumer electronics demand by as much as 75 percent.
Speculation on the price of iPhones hit anticipated highs of more than
$2,000.
The reality is that volatility is bad for business, and circularity could
increase the feasibility of domestic manufacturing.
A circular electronics
ecosystem
would take into consideration the resource needs — new, renewable, reclaimed or
recycled chemicals and materials; along with energy and water — and the output
from each life cycle stage — products, emissions, waste. Final products would be
designed to be
disassembled
after a long and durable life. Data about what goes into and out of products
would be collected and shared for insights on material supply and demand,
components and final products. R&D would offer economically feasible and
scalable solutions. This cycle would flourish because the technologies, policies
and economic incentives would exist to make it worthwhile.
What’s hindering circular manufacturing in the US
However, to date, we have not had technology and policy drivers — nor the
economic incentives — to support a circular, domestic supply chain at
scale.
I’ve also heard industry leaders highlight additional barriers to their
embracing circularity — including a lack of education on how to incorporate it
into their manufacturing, uncertainties in the types of data needed to determine
and report on circularity, and whether economic incentives exist to support it
at scale.
In addition, the industry is not yet aligned on how we collectively measure and
conceptualize circularity. Do we measure and improve circularity for every
electronics component — such as circuit boards — or measure it per final
product, such as laptops? Opinions diverge, and consensus is
needed
to measure and drive progress.
And with R&D at government and research institutions in danger and some
companies considering sacrificing their R&D because of tariff-fueled budget
constraints, circular electronics innovations could be further deterred.
The business case for supply chain resilience
The real winners of this current volatility will be those companies that can
turn their sustainable innovations into cost savings and revenue. With an
estimated $57 billion in iron, copper and gold lost annually to electronic
waste,
circularity presents a clear opportunity for financial gains.
Apple is a well-known example: In its 2025 Environmental Progress
Report,
the company reported that 24 percent of the materials in its products shipped to
customers last year — including aluminum, cobalt, rare earths and
lithium — were recycled,
supporting its circular ambitions and forging a path for the industry.
While there have been these exciting successes and other promising
innovations,
circularity doesn’t currently operate at the scale needed to meet growing demand
for electronics. Perhaps the lack of an urgent need to rethink how and where
electronics are made is the reason we have not yet established industry demand
to circularize. With the rollercoaster of potential tariffs, electronics
companies are now being forced to seek ways to stabilize costs in efforts to
support the industry’s continued growth trajectory; circularity is one potential
approach to this challenge.
Regardless of tariff threats, data show that the industry is embracing a
sustainable transition: IPC’s recent sentiment
survey, Wired for
Change, found that global
electronics companies are overwhelmingly embracing sustainability initiatives.
Nearly 60 percent of respondents cite sustainability’s cost savings and
efficiencies as key drivers for their sustainability and circularity efforts.
Supporting electronics’ circular transformation
The global electronics industry relies on each other; we need to move together
to support a sustainable shift. This is what drove IPC to launch
Evolve — a program providing industry guidance and
a reliable source for sustainability best practices — to ensure that the
industry moves as a collective.
Gathering and sharing industry best practices is needed to support increasing
circularity in the electronics industry. This will also help empower specific
regions or supply chain segments to make the capital expenditure investments or
supplier adjustments necessary to maximize impact.
One of the biggest hurdles to overcome is raising awareness about what is
currently possible — which materials, components and final products are already
able to be circularized. A lot of manufacturers that I encounter don’t even know
that circularity is an option for our industry — let alone the cost savings that
can be associated with these practices.
No company is alone as the electronics ecosystem grapples with its future. As an
industry, we can design for circularity with consideration to products’ entire
life cycle — creating a unified approach that can provide a sustainable,
resilient path forward.
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Lead Sustainability Strategist, IPC
As sustainability strategy lead for IPC, a global trade association for the electronics industry, Dr. Kelly Scanlon works closely with industry leaders to find evidence-based solutions for sustainability challenges including GHG accounting and conducting double materiality assessments.
Published Apr 29, 2025 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST