By Dr. Kelly Scanlon, Sustainable Brands
A side effect of tariffs could be an increase in industry circularity and the associated recycling of materials and components to enable domestic electronics manufacturing.
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.