Arctic Cooling Reverses Price Hikes After Trump Tariff Refund
Thermal interface and CPU cooler maker Arctic Cooling has taken the unprecedented move in these turbulent times of lowering the prices of its products across the board. The reason? It just got paid back for all those Trump tariffs, as Tom’s Hardware reports.
The Trump administration brought in broad tariffs after being elected in early 2025, forcing US companies and therefore many customers to swallow enormous taxes on specific products. Although they were designed to increase the competitiveness of US solutions, they mostly just made everything more expensive. The Supreme Court eventually shot them down, ruling that the president wasn’t legally able to enact tariffs unilaterally. It then forced the admin to dole out refunds, which it is now doing, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.
Credit: Arctic Cooling
“When US trade tariffs significantly increased, Arctic proactively absorbed as much of the tariffs as possible to protect our customers,” the company said in a statement. “While most of the product lineup remained unaffected, price adjustments became necessary for a limited number of products in the US market. At the time, Arctic committed to reversing those increases if circumstances allowed.”
Somehow, even amidst crazy price increases for memory, graphics cards, and seemingly everything else, Arctic Cooling believes those circumstances have now been realized and prices are falling. For now, just the products that saw price rises during the tariff year or so; just about everything is cheaper, and in some cases, cheaper by a lot.
At its peak, the 360mm Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro was $125. You can now buy it for just $70. The Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB was $93; it’s now $77, and its 4U-M CPU cooler was $55; now it’s only $25. Other cheaper coolers have a few bucks shaved off, while the top models are all close to half price. It’s an enormous cut, and though we’re hoping these prices remain, it’s probably a great time to upgrade your cooling if you’ve been waiting for the right moment.
Further cementing its good-guy credentials, Arctic Cooling is using part of this surprise refund to invest in grassroots PC communities through hardware donations and technical support, as well as to boost community initiatives.
Arctic Cooling is the first company to make this kind of price cut after tariff refunds. Here’s hoping it catches on.
