In Trump’s Tariff Era, the Right to Repair Will Be More Important Than Ever

The tariff era will require a shift in how products are produced and reduced. Wiens says he has also been talking to workers at electronics recycling facilities and telling them not to harvest discarded products if they’re still working.

“Hey, whatever you are going to shred, stop shredding it,” Wiens says. “Whatever materials you’re going to export, stop exporting it. That product’s going to have more value than you thought.”

Despite the doom and gloom that watching the stock market plummet might invoke in our collective psyche, right-to-repair advocates hope this moment helps make the case for keeping devices in working order.

“I don’t feel like the sky is falling,” says Nathan Proctor, who helms the campaign for the right to repair at the consumer advocacy group PIRG. “First of all, Wall Street people are the 13-year-old girls of social commentary. Everything is total drama all the time. Let’s not go overboard. Let’s see how this plays out.”

Like Wiens, Proctor believes that repair makes society more resilient and will help people get through this where it can.

“It’s going to be very disruptive in the short term,” Proctor says. “I’m not sure how long that’s going to last or what the impact’s going to be. But I do know that a more resilient society is better.”

Leo Gebbie, a principal analyst at the research firm CCS Insights says that another segment of the market that could benefit from higher tariffs are secondhand markets that sell used devices, like Backmarket. They’ve been doing quite well even before the tariffs were announced, with secondhand devices frequently bought and sold within the US. Now, that popularity is likely to increase.

“They are more cost-effective,” Gebbie says. “There is a strong supply of secondhand iPhones within the US, so for US consumers there shouldn’t be a need to import those devices from elsewhere and have them subject to tariffs.”

Backmarket in particular seems to be well aware of its place in this trend, as right now it is cheekily offering a Recession Special where customers can use a code (ELON) to save 10 percent on their purchase. However, if demand for secondhand devices goes up, there could be a knock-on effect where more phones being sold in the US could lead to prices being raised across the board—including in European markets that have tended to have stronger demand for used devices than the US.

“Really we will [only] know more once we see prices change,” Gebbie says. “Obviously consumers are then in a position where they have something to react to.”

Rethinking how we repair and replace our devices already has an analogue for how to guide that behavior. The automotive industry (which is bound to feel its own impacts from the tariffs) offers an example of how to care for products long term.

“Do people buy new cars? Sure,” Wiens says. “Do they keep cars for 20 years? Absolutely. Yeah. Does anyone throw away a car because the windshield’s broken? No.”

Sadly, even the repair side of things is bound to feel the effects of tariff inflation. Spare parts and tools needed to fix things depend on global manufactures as much as finished products do. Wiens, who runs a business that sells tools meant for repairing devices, says he will also directly feel the effects of the tariffs and be forced to pass the increased cost onto customers. Even then, he hopes that a silver lining in the tariff chaos will be consumers changing their buying habits.

“Let’s stop buying cheap crap. Let’s have fewer, nicer things, and let’s use them for a long time,” Wiens says. “And so then you say, well, if we’re going to stop buying new things, what do we do with the stuff? How do we take care of the things that we have? Well, that’s where the right-to-repair world comes in.